Constructing the future of water infrastructures: lessons from the cases of water saving and eco-sanitation

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Constructing the future of water infrastructures
lessons from the cases of water saving and
eco-sanitation

• Bas van Vliet, Environmental Policy Group
  Wageningen University

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Outline

• Questioning the current attempts of shaping
  future water systems
• Representations of water infrastructures
• Classifying Innovation in water infrastructures
• The case of Eco sanitation
• The future of innovation in water infrastructures
• Ways forward in social scientific research

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Questioning the change in water infrastructures

• How to change such large technical systems?
• Which are based on huge technical infrastructural
  networks being built from the late 19th century
  on
• With vested public (public health, national
  security)
• and private (water industry) interests.
• With linkages to intimate aspects of everyday
  life (toilet practices) and cultural robust
  standards of Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience

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Current Innovation programmes

• Being based on technological variation and
  selection
• But who exactly varies and who selects?
• What is the dividing line in between?
• and experimentation that should lead to regime
  changes
• As yet not clear how to design pilots as to make
  them successful
• Many subsidy programmes focus on technological
  solutions
• and are geared towards endless experimentation

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Lineair flow scheme
Purification
Consumption
Water supply system Waste water system
Down stream
Upstream
Upstream
Abstraction-purification-storage-supply-
consumption - discharge-transport- treatment-
drainage-reuse
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Closed Loop System
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Sociotechnical approaches
Improvement in environmental efficiency
New system
Factor 10
Factor 5
Factor 2
20 years
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Classifying Innovation in water infrastructures

• Four Dichotomies and one Mixture
• Upstream / Downstream
• Incremental / Radical
• Grass root / Top-down initiatives
• Technical / social
• Modernised Mixtures

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Upstream / downstream (or supply / demand side)

• Upstream new abstraction and purification
  methods (extraction from river shores, UV),
  wastewater treatment by nano membranes
• Downstream household water, water saving
  household devices, composting toilets, combined
  billing systems

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Incremental or radical innovations

• Incremental change within existing technological
  paradigm
• storm water control, water saving showers,
  up-scaling sewerage and treatment
• Radical change break away from existing regimes
• dry toilets, distribution of use water, (
  bottled drinking water), on-site rain water
  recovery as source for drinking water.

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Grass-root / Top-Down

• Grass root indebted to Appropriate Technology
  and Schumacher movement
• citizen-initiatives, mostly with de-centralized,
  off-grid, autonomous and easy applicable and
  manageable solutions.
• Top-down
• water companies, research institutes or
  government initiatives, mostly centralized, high
  tech solutions, or holistic concepts such as
  decentralized sanitation and reuse

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Technical / Social innovations

• Technical focus on the hardware,
• i.e. nano membrane filtration
• Social focus on software
• new systems of cost recovery and billing for
  water services

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Modernised Mixtures

• High-tech next to low-tech solutions in one
  system
• Socio-technical approach
• Integrated into the mainstream built-environment
• Living up to present demands of high Comfort,
  cleanliness and convenience levels/ compatible
  with modern life (styles)
• Developed by (utility) companies/ providers in
  creative dialogue with end-users as co-producing
  civilians

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Small is Beautiful
Modernised Mixtures
Large is Conventional
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Example Eco sanitation

• Group of environmental technologists, specialists
  in on-site systems of waste water treatment.
  Prominent critics of sewer systems since the
  early 1970s
• While on-site eco-sanitation systems have been
  successfully implemented in many developing
  countries, diffusion in Europe is lagging behind
• Within project chance to apply and test such
  technologies in real settings

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Closed Loop System
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Ecosan options
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Story Line Technology Developers Ecosanitation

• Sewer systems are wasting water, energy,
  nutrients and building matarials
• Eco-sanitation keeps waste concentrated, which
  enables more efficient treatment, and produces
  energy (methane)
• It is simple and proven technology

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Some peculiarities

• The sewer system is a dominating technological
  system and is almost everywhere available
• Users do not want to be bothered (again) on how
  their feces and urine are being treated
• For which problem is Eco-sanitation a solution?
• Is it the water saving and do we have a lack of
  water?
• Is it the reuse of nutrients and is there a lack
  of them in Dutch agriculture?
• Is it the vulnerability of the current sewer
  system? Then how robust is on-site
  eco-sanitation?
• Is it the high costs of sewer system maintenance?
  Then can eco-sanitation be cheaper?

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Social Scientific Story Line Ecosanitation

• Implementation of Eco-sanitation encompasses a
  socio-technical transition in sanitation, water
  supply and even in agriculture
• The institutional social cultural robustness
  of sanitation practices seems to be highly
  underestimated
• Only technical and environmental arguments will
  not sell this technology to the public

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Multi-level change is not a one-way road!
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Ways forward in transitions in water
infrastructures

• Redesign niche developments
• Experiment not only with technologies but with
  different modes of institutional organization
  along the whole chain
• Take into account diverse problem definitions
• Raised at the upstream (fertiliser industry,
  agriculture) and at the down stream level
  (citizen-consumers)
• Reframe closed loop rhetoric into more
  fashionable topics
• renewable energy, water stress, or standards of
  comfort, cleanliness and convenience

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Ways forward in Social scientific research

• In stead of traditional studies on acceptation
  or non-technical barriers
• Rethinking niche management, and innovation
  programmes that are based on technical variation
  and selection by small networks of
  techno-scientists (STS approach).
• Who and what constitutes the variation
  environment?
• How can selection environments be broadened?
• Studying the co-evolution of technology,
  institutions, cultural standards and social
  practices in domains of everyday life
• to obtain a reference to study experiments and
  innovation at large (social practices approach,
  Spaargaren et al)
• To reveal todays built-in futures of water
  infrastructures

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Thank You

• www.enp.wur.nl/UK