Project
Socio-economic analysis of circular water governance (PhD project - Noëlle Lasseur)
Water represents a major element of life and intersects with all levels of societies and industries. Today, its sustainable use and management face major threats. Models of Circular Economy applied to the field of Water (CEW) offer promising opportunities to overcome these challenges. But its implementation leads to many economic- and socio-institutional challenges, such as adapted regulation and governance, and public acceptance of water and wastewater reuse. These challanges should be considered to ensure an effective transition. This research project aims to contribute to the conceptualization and methodological aspects of CEW, by offering a larger view on the needs for a successful transition of water to a circular model, focusing on Dutch case studies.
Background
The Dutch delta faces enormous challenges in fresh water provision for industry, agriculture and nature during increasingly frequent severe droughts due to climate change. This requires a major overhaul towards a water system that stores precipitation surplus instead of discharging it to the sea, and uses alternative water sources. The transdisciplinary research project AquaConnect is instrumental in this transition by developing tools to understand and manage related societal changes, among other things.
Description
Over the last decades, scientists demonstrated the need to change the way societies manage and use natural resources, including water. The pressure put on natural resources all over the world is not considered sustainable over the long-term (UN Environment, 2019). The limits to growth of the current economic system have been highlighted, particularly regarding the water sector. In May 2022, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water reviewed the current critical state of global water management and added that water is one of the first casualties of the climate crisis (Ministerie van Buitenlandse, and Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Waterstaat, 2022).
In line with the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan (European Commission, 2022), The Netherlands have set themselves the objective of becoming fully circular by 2050 (Rijksoverheid, 2016). This also applies to the field of water. The transition towards a CE still seems to be in its initial phase. In the EU only 2.4% of the treated urban wastewater effluents and less than 0.5% of annual EU freshwater withdrawals was reused annually in 2020 (European Commission, 2022). In The Netherlands, the same observations were made by PBL (PBL, 2010), who reports on the national progress regarding the achievement of a fully CE by 2050. PBL publishes an integrated CE Report (ICER) once every two years, and concludes that an intensification of CE policies is necessary (ICER, 2021). The reports indicates that Circular companies make up only 6% of companies in the Netherlands, and that most of those circular companies already existed before the implementation of the Dutch CE policy. The report also adds that those existing circular companies still function rather linearly. PBL indicates that the Dutch government chose to focus on five circular transition themes and derives public policies and specific monitoring indicators from them. Water is not specifically included in the themes, and water consumptions or water footprint indicators have not been updated since 2008.
Circular economy
Models of Circular Economy (CE) applied to the field of Water (CEW) offer promising opportunities to overcome the sustainable long-term challenges of water use. The term of CE has been widely used over the last years; however, no official definition is yet commonly used. It has been highlighted that CE is a current-evolving concept, that still requires an official definition, boundaries, principles, and associated practices (Merli et al., 2018).
CE goes beyond waste reduction or waste recycling. It embraces the idea that materials, components, and products should be designed and produced so that they can be restored, retained and re-distributed in the economy for as long as it is environmentally, technically, socially and economically feasible. The Ellen Mac Arthur Foundation stipulates that CE is a systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution (Ellen Mac Arthur foundation, 2012). The significant potential for further development of circular water projects in the EU has been widely recognized and embedded within international-, European-, and national strategies (European Commission, 2022). When applied to the field of water, CE can also be defined in opposition to the “linear-economy” concept. Within this concept water would be extracted from sources, purified, used in a specific sector, and discharged back to the basin directly or indirectly, after a treatment facility. Several CEW strategies have been highlighted in the current literature (Morseletto et al, 2022): rethink, avoid, reduce, replace, reuse, recycle, cascading, store and recover.
The concept of CEW is new, and in construction. This research project aims to contribute to its conceptualization and structuring. As a part of the interdisciplinary research project AquaConnect, with a double focus on political sciences and environmental economics, this research project aims to study the following question: How can water governance facilitate the transition of water management practices to a Circular Economy of Water?
