Institutions and Barriers
This article includes information on drivers for and processes for change in water management. Glen Daigger from CH2M Hill presents innovation theories and their application to water utilities and policies. Cynthia Mitchell and her colleagues from the Institute for Sustainable Futures in Sydney, Australia, applies theories of transition management to the unrecognized need for phosphorus recovery from wastewater back into agricultural use. Carol Howe from the SWITCH program in the Netherlands describes learning alliances in major cities around the globe.
The Growing Role for Innovation in Urban Water Management
Glen T. Daigger
A model for innovation is presented to achieve the changes in urban water management (1) necessary to meet the needs of the 21st century and (2) possible to achieve the potential contribution to economic and social advancement. This model is based on continuous improvement to existing approaches coupled with breakthroughs allowing approaches with dramatically enhanced performance capabilities to be implemented. These changes are enabled by a growing toolkit of scientific, engineering, and management advances and can be assisted by necessary federal investments to support research and development. Regulatory reform to allow more integrated management across the water sector and on a performance basis rather than in a prescriptive manner will further enable this innovation model. Institutional reform to facilitate more integrated urban water management is desirable, along with reform of professional practice. Leadership for this approach can come from the utility sector and can lead to achieving the full potential of the 21st century vision for urban water management.
A growing number of professionals have concluded that a “tipping point” is being reached where traditional approaches must be dramatically altered to provide truly sustainable urban water management (Monsma, et al., 2009; Daigger, 2009, 2007; Novotny and Brown, 2007). Referred to by some as 21st century urban water management, these professionals contend that a new paradigm is required. Technical, economic, and social innovation are required, but numerous barriers exist to rapid innovation in urban water management. This paper presents a blueprint for innovation in urban water management. But, first the imperative for change is presented, and barriers and enablers to innovation in urban water management are reviewed.
Effectively managing the transition towards restorative futures in the sewage industry: a phosphorus case study
Cynthia Mitchell, Dena Fam and Dana Cordell
The water and sewage industry globally is at a transformation point. Whilst infrastructure is ageing, pressures are increasing and expectations are shifting towards quite different kinds of outcomes, including restorative futures that have a net positive impact. There is a growing realization that conventional approaches will struggle to deliver these kinds of outcomes, so new approaches are necessary. The emerging field of transition management offers some guidance for how to strategically manage a transition toward a restorative future. Phosphate scarcity will be a significant pressure and opportunity for new forms of sewage management in the medium term, so phosphorus recovery from sewage makes a particularly interesting case study for applying transition thinking.
The water and sewage industry is at a transformation point. Climate change impacts, changing hydrological conditions, population growth, resource scarcity, aging infrastructure, economic constraints in financing large scale systems, and changing expectations for water quality (e.g. European Union water directives) all challenge existing planning parameters for developing and extending conventional centralized water and sewage systems.
While the resource intense nature of centralized water-based sanitation systems will struggle to adapt to these future uncertainties, there is a growing recognition within the water sector that an environmentally, economically and socially sustainable sanitation system requires sewage to be viewed as a set of resources to be recovered, recycled and reused (water, energy, nutrients) rather than a waste product to be treated to successively higher standards before release to the environment. Whilst such concepts have been core to the ecosanitation part of the sector for many years, what is different now is that the concepts are gaining traction in the mainstream, large-scale end of the industry. For example, this year’s International Water Association Leading Edge Technology conference, held as part of Singapore International Water Week that attracted up to 10,000 delegates from across the globe, opened with a workshop explicitly focused on carbon and nutrient recovery (see www.siww.com.sg). The impact of these realizations on the form, scale and operation of the sewage sector could be enormous (see Figure 1).To date, resource recovery from sewage has largely focused on water due to increasing concerns of water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change impacts, urbanization and population growth. The national water industry association in Australia recognizes this and the implications for infrastructure in its vision for a sustainable urban water future: ‘Given the need to maximize the efficient use of recycled water, it is highly likely that the days of extending sewage collection systems over ever- increasing distances to be connected to coastal sewage treatment plants are coming to an end.’ (WSAA 2009, p7). Elsewhere, nutrient recovery has emerged in areas (such as The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden) where changes in sewage management practices are being driven by concerns about contributions to nutrient imbalances, eutrophication, discharge of pharmaceuticals and a loss of biodiversity in receiving water bodies.
By shifting the paradigm from ‘removal’ to ‘recovery and reuse’ there is the potential to move beyond ‘sustainability’ toward developing ‘restorative’ systems (McGee et al., 2008) of water and sewage management. Restorative systems aim to have positive economic, social and ecological impacts, and are necessary for remediating historical effects of conventional sewage systems and in making up for areas that will not reach the baseline goal of sustainability (Mitchell, 2008).
Innovative thinking across various dimensions is required to move toward restorative systems and is occurring globally with emergence of four significant themes:
1. New costing perspectives
There is an increasing interest in costing approaches that expand beyond a narrow focus on least financial cost to a single stakeholder, and encompass broader costs and benefits and broader stakeholders. One such approach is integrated resource planning (Swisher 1997, Vickers 2001), which seeks the lowest cost to society across the life of the infrastructure whilst providing socially and environmentally preferable outcomes (Mitchell et al., 2007). Since water and sewage management are generally provided by public funds, least cost investment in water and sewage infrastructure and its operation frees up funds for investing in other public infrastructure, like schools and hospitals. Another emerging approach is ‘value based’ evaluation to design and implement systems that have the most value. This shift in perspective in valuation processes is occurring globally (e.g., The Vancouver Valuation Accord). Another is the increasing interest in bringing externalities inside the decision-making process, through sustainability accounting (see Yarra Valley Water, 2009, p12), assigning value to externalities or deliberative engagement (see below). All of these economic evaluation approaches have the potential to radically change what decisions are made by water authorities in developing water and sewage management systems.
2. Participatory, deliberative decision making in developing water systems
As the adoption of distributed systems and nutrient recovery presents a paradigm shift in wastewater management, community engagement is essential for the introduction of alternative socio-technical systems. By adopting ‘representative and deliberative’ processes of engagement in decision making, the aim is not only to select participants who are representative of the society of concern but also provide outcomes from the process that will impact the decisions of authorities. Not only does this approach provide the potential for delivering ‘well-informed, fair and equitable decisions’ (Fung & Wright 2003)(p.x) in the water sector but also of providing much needed public support for new approaches to water and sewage management and the associated institutional arrangements needed to support their introduction. These approaches are closely linked to those that expand notions of costing.
3. Shifting from a resource focus to service focus
While conventional business thinking takes an output focus and is concerned with supplying a commodity, a shift in the sustainable business arena is occurring toward being outcome focus and supplying a service rather than supplying a resource (Dunphy, Griffiths & Benn, 2003). This conceptual shift in thinking is providing significant gains in economic, environmental and social outcomes while improving financial performance (See Mitchell et al., 2007 for further examples).
4. Systemic thinking & synergies between energy, water reuse and nutrient recovery
Systemic thinking is increasingly being acknowledged as critical for sustainable management of our natural resources on a local, regional or global scale (e.g. ESSP, online; Urban Water, 2006; SLIM, 2006). However the institutional and physical structures created to manage natural resources over the last decades do not reflect a translation of systems thinking into practice. A good example of this is the nature of most centralized water and sanitation systems through to the global food production and consumption system. While both the sanitation and agricultural systems have the potential to take advantage of synergies between material flows, such as reuse of wastewater fractions in food production, rarely does either system integrate and make use of the potential resources available. Instead in an energy and resource intense way, the sanitation and agricultural sectors are continually sourcing new resources of water and nutrients. (Cordell, 2008)
A restorative future for the sanitation and water sector would encompass all these shifts, and provide a starting point for backcasting (Dreborg 1996, Mitchell and White 2003) to the present to identify alternative paths for infrastructure planning and investment, in developed and developing countries alike.
There is little doubt that the embedded nature of the sanitation system, with intertwined components of physical assets, organizations, institutions and social habits of practice, create significant barriers to system innovation (Fam et al. 2009) and integrating material flows across the sanitation and agricultural sector. But the critical nature of resource depletion (nutrients) and scarcity (water, energy, nutrients) means there is greater acknowledgement by the water sector (e.g., the Victorian Water Industry Association’s annual sustainability seminar this year had the title: ‘Responding to a water, carbon and nutrient constrained future’) of the need for sustainable resource recovery from sewage. Today the question is therefore not whether technological change should occur but how to strategically manage a transition toward sustainable means of resource recovery. The water sector has the opportunity and is in the position to facilitate such a shift toward technological change and sustainable reuse of constituents in sewage.
Learning Alliances – The SWITCH Approach to Catalyse Change
Carol A. Howe, John Butterworth
SWITCH is a five year, action research programme focused on urban water management. “Learning Alliances (LAs)” have been formed in thirteen global cities to implement innovative demonstrations and undertake planning for strategic integrated urban water management. The focus of each city’s Learning Alliance has been driven by the critical issues faced as well as the cultural and institutional structure of the city. In this paper the process of establishing the SWITCH Learning Alliances and their evolution over a four year period are described. The paper concludes with lessons learned including: flexible research plans and budgets should be in place to allow uptake of learning alliance recommendations, sufficient resources should be allocated to stakeholder analysis and LA facilitation, researchers should play a backstopping role to city LA members, joint visions should be built early in the process, results should be shared in short cycles and investment in monitoring and evaluation is critical.
Many cities throughout the world are struggling to manage water effectively, and many more will struggle in the future due to increasing pressures from climate change, population growth and migration, energy shortages and fluctuating economic conditions. Water management, in both developing and developed countries often focuses on today’s problems using conventional approaches. Such approaches are often fragmented with components of the various elements of the urban water system being designed and operated in isolation. Short-term solutions to current problems are preferred despite the risk that the implemented measures are not the most cost effective or sustainable in the long-term. The science that underlies decision making also tends to be done in isolation. Interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary solutions are rarely achieved and systematic solutions that bridge the economic, environmental, social and technical aspects of water management are uncommon.
An increasingly common requirement of agencies funding water management innovation is for researchers to ensure that their work is demand-led and communicated effectively. The underlying rationale is to improve the impact of research on policy and outcomes. Individuals and projects are as a result under pressure to do much more than what was traditionally understood as ‘good science’. They are required not only to understand the priorities of potential users, but also to take account of the prevailing institutional context, to undertake research in partnership with implementers and other key stakeholders (e.g. regulatory authorities, civil society agencies, financial institutions, and the private sector) and to communicate results and emerging innovations effectively. However, with little training or experience in these areas, and usually with limited budgets or support, attempts to assess demand and establish and develop alliances with other key stakeholders, are rarely thorough, and even less commonly, well documented. Communication strategies are generally weak, most often focusing on traditional methods to disseminate results towards the end of a project. These limitations, when taken together with the narrow focus of much technical research and the neglect of political context or developmental processes, are increasingly linked to the failure of many water management innovations to have relevant impact (Gyawali et al., 2006).
The concepts underlying complexity science provide researchers and practitioners some of the tools that are needed come to terms with the dynamics and change processes of complex systems. Though initially complexity science focused on physical and biological phenomena, it has gradually started to gain ground in social, economic and political science.
Ramalingam and Jones (2008) distinguish ten key characteristics of complex systems that refer to the system, change, and agents of change. Though it goes beyond the scope of this paper to discuss these key characteristics in detail, the water management systems of large cities display most of these characteristics.
Wicked problems are common in complex systems. Wicked problems can be defined as problems that only can be understood by exploring solutions, and each wicked problem is new and unique. There are no definite solutions and solutions are not right or wrong. Finally, solving wicked problems are one-shot operations as the implementation of a solution will change the problem. Conklin (2006) explains how wicked problems in complex systems often lead to fragmentation. Fragmentation suggests that people consider themselves to separated rather than united and a situation in which knowledge and information is scattered. The fragmentation essentially represents the different views from different stakeholders that all feel that their view is the most correct and their problems are most urgent and need to be addressed on a priority basis.
It is becoming increasingly clear that traditional science - in which specialists divide complex and wicked problems into small bits and take a linear approach to problem solving - finds it difficult to deal with complexity and to explore solutions for wicked problems. Conklin (2006) argues that the answer to fragmentation – and the start of dealing with complexity and wicked problems – is a creating coherence in terms of understanding the problem and a shared vision.
SWITCH (Sustainable Water Management Improves Tomorrow’s Cities Health) is a European Union funded action research program targeted at catalyzing change to a more sustainable and integrated urban water management. The “consortium” comprises the academic and urban planning fields, water utilities and consultants. The network of researchers and practitioners are working directly with stakeholders in 13 global cities (see Figure 1). Testing innovations through demonstrations and related action research and sharing knowledge across a range of different geographical, climatic and socio-cultural settings was expected to contribute to wider adoption and
Resources
This article is an extract from the report, Sustainability and International Innovation, by Valerie I. Nelson, Jerry Stonebridge and Steve Modemeyer
This report presents updated work from eight of the key speakers at the 2007 international conference Water for All Life: A Decentralized Infrastructure for a Sustainable Future. Each chapter represents a major thread in the new fabric of understanding of water sustainability that became embodied in the Baltimore Charter which was drafted following the conference. In addition to chapters on a new water management paradigm, new technologies and tools for sustainability, and institutions and barriers, the report includes a chapter on eco-cities as well as resource directory of international experts. A final chapter is included on prospects for innovation in the United States.
