Bas van Vliet, Environmental Policy Group Wageningen University

1. Constructing the future of water infrastructures: lessons from the cases of water saving and eco-sanitation Bas van Vliet, Environmental Policy Group Wageningen University

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. Lineair flow scheme Purification Consumption Water supply system Waste water system Upstream Down stream Upstream Abstraction-purification-storage-supply- consumption- discharge-transport- treatment- drainage-reuse

6. Closed Loop System

7. Improvement in environmental efficiency Consolidation New system Factor 10 Macro level (landscape) Factor 5 Meso level (regimes) Acceleration Take off Predevelopment Micro level (niches) Time horizon 20 years Sociotechnical approaches Improvement in environmental efficiency New system Factor 10 Factor 5 Factor 2 20 years

8. Classifying Innovation in water infrastructures Four Dichotomies and one Mixture • Upstream / Downstream • Incremental / Radical • Grass root / Top-down initiatives • Technical / social • Modernised Mixtures

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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’

12. 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

13. 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

14. Modernised Mixtures Large is Conventional Small is Beautiful

15. 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

16. Closed Loop System

17. Liernur system 1870-1912 Ecosan options

18. 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

19. 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?

20. Social Scientific Story Line Ecosanitation • Implementation of Eco-sanitation encompasses a socio-technical transitionin 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

21. Macro level (landscape) Meso level (regimes) Micro level (niches) Multi-level change is not a one-way road!

22. 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

23. 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 today’s built-in futures of water infrastructures

24. Thank You www.enp.wur.nl/UK