Examining the ethical dimensions of circular water management

Ethics in circular water management: Justice and risk in public governance

Introduction and background

Circular water management aims to move from a linear take-use-dispose” model towards reuse, recycling and resource recovery. Examples include:

• Reuse of treated wastewater for irrigation, industry or even potable purposes
• Greywater systems in buildings and neighbourhoods
• Recovery of nutrients, energy and heat from wastewater and sludge
• Decentralised treatment systems integrated into urban design

  These interventions are often framed as sustainable, climate-resilient and innovative. But they also raise important ethical and justice-related questions, such as:

• Who gets access to high-quality water, and who is expected to use reclaimed water?
• Do circular solutions reinforce or reduce existing inequalities (e.g. between rich and poor neighbourhoods, urban and rural areas, Global North and South)?
• Risk, health and responsibility
• How are risks and uncertainties evaluated and communicated?
• Who carries the burden if something goes wrong (e.g. contamination, technical failure)?
• How do people feel about using treated wastewater, especially for drinking or food production?
• How are communities informed and involved in decisions, and whose voices are missing?
• How do ideas like the human right to water, intergenerational justice, or environmental justice apply in circular systems?

Despite a growing technical and policy literature on circular water, the ethical dimensions are often implicit, fragmented, or addressed only in passing. There is a need for focused work that brings these issues together and grounds them in concrete cases.

Project description
The overall ambition of the projects is to understand is to understand how ethical issues are framed in theory and practice, how different actors perceive and handle them, and what this means for fair and responsible circular water governance.

You might look at this in the Netherlands or somewhere else. You will combine

• A structured literature review on ethics/justice in circular water systems; and
• Empirical fieldwork (e.g. case study, interviews, survey, document analysis or another method) in one or more real-world circular water projects.
• Data analysis

  The scope and depth can be scaled:

• Bachelor level: literature review on a topic of your choosing
• Master level: case(s), data collection, possibly cross-country or cross-project comparison.

Start of the thesis: as soon as possible

Contact person: Kirsty Holstead (kirsty.holstead@wur.nl)