Sustainable sewage management and the inertia to change
Abstract
Increasing economic costs and environmental concerns have led to that planners around the world are progressively questioning the prevailing sewage management paradigm, calling for a shift in the hydrosocial contract to embrace more sustainable solutions, to be based on closed-loops rather than linear end-of-pipe solutions. Despite considerable attention to the technical possibilities for delivering sewage services in a more integrated and sustainable fashion, shifts in planning and management have been slow. Based on an extensive study of Australian cities, Brown et al (2009) have developed a model with six transitional stages and argue that "while there may be cognitive changes (best practice thinking such as water sustainable urban design), there has not been sufficient normative and regulative change to support new practice." They contrast three historic transition stages with three successive sustainable stages. Unfortunately, the study ends in a rather vague outline of "the Water Sensitive City", with little sign-posts indicating how one might transition to this seemingly utopian last stage. In the present paper, we discuss the normative tensions created between the different actors in this increasingly complex playing field, who represent different and often competing values. We suggest that cities have difficulties transitioning from the old contract to one of the newer ones because the hydro-social contract promised by these new stages create normative tensions not only between the new and the old, but also between what one might call different types of environmentalists: naturalists and pragmatists. The naturalists, who for example are very voiced in several cities along the North American west coast, tend to embrace the perception of Nature described by environmental historians as Untouched Wilderness, where technology is pinpointed as the root of the problems. In contrast, the other side lean more on the idea of modernity, with a more pragmatic approach to nature, which first and foremost is seen as a provider of material resources and technology is a tool that aids solving the problem with the limited supply. The naturalists' cognitive response points to solutions that are perceived as 'natural' such as composting and constructed wetlands, but do to not easily embrace solutions that are perceived as 'technical', such as smart metering, biogas reactors, and recovery of pelleted phosphorous compounds. We suggest that transition to the 'Water Sensitive City' requires explicit recognition that sewage management is a context-dependent multi-dimensional, multi-objective challenge in which competing objectives must be identified and trade-offs made, which includes recognizing and finding ways to manage the tacit tensions caused by competing normative underpinnings among different types of environmentalism.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.H31I1236O
- Keywords:
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- 1880 HYDROLOGY / Water management