A question I get asked rather frequently in scholarly (and laypeople’s) circles is why do you do research on the politics and governance of wastewater?” The notion of what happens to water after anthropogenic activities have changed its properties (read: after we have polluted it) seems foreign to many individuals, even scholars immersed in the social science of water. This is, as Jaimie Benidickson has mentioned, very much the ‘culture of flushing‘.

Wastewater has been a major focus of environmental engineering research. Studies that focus on impacts of industrial and urban effluent use on agriculture and the potential for waterborne diseases have also been relatively popular. Yet, social sciences’ scholars seem to think of water primarily in scarcity/access terms (e.g. drinking water) rather than in terms of water quality and use (i.e. wastewater). This isn’t a new phenomenon. Common-pool-resources (CPR) theory and neo-institutionalism are both apt bodies of literature that can be well used to explore questions of water scarcity. Yet few folks focus on the governance of wastewater as I do.

Much like talking about wastewater, talking about toilets is also rather taboo. The discomfort that “talking about shit” brings along is not foreign to me either. I was a young undergraduate chemical engineering student when I first started working on designing municipal wastewater treatment plants (at bench-scale and industrial scale). These aerobic, activated-sludge effluent treatment processes were very effective in processing (you guessed it) urban/residential wastewater. But in sampling urban wastewater to process, I was able to witness the broad-ranging variation in sanitation infrastructure within the urban area where I was living, and the negative impacts that inadequate sanitation facilities had on local, vulnerable communities. As I have moved forward to do research on the governance of wastewater, these images have stayed imprinted in me and have shaped my body of research work.

Yet the sanitation infrastructure we have in major urban centres (I live in Vancouver, British Columbia) is not by any stretch of the imagination equal to what others have in developing countries. According to the latest UNICEF-WHO WASH report 2.5 billion people do not use improved sanitation. The sad news is that even if we met the Millenium Development Goals (MDG), there will still be 1.7 billion people without access to basic sanitation. While the proportion of the world population that practises open defecation declined from 25% in 1990 to 17% in 2008, 1.1 billion people still defecate in the open. We do not have enough infrastructure for human waste disposal. In plain English, not enough toilets.

Thus the relevance of World Toilet Day. From their website:

World Toilet Organization created WTD to raise global awareness of the struggle 2.6 billion face every day without access to proper, clean sanitation.WTD also brings to the forefront the health, emotional and psychological consequences the poor endure as a result of inadequate sanitation.

While the activities planned by World Toilet Day are light-hearted in nature, I strongly believe that the main message is relevant. Consider how lucky we are to have improved sanitation facilities and almost-universal access to toilets in urban areas, and consider donating to charities that work to build sanitary facilities in developing nations. On November 19th, think about this.

Are River Basin Councils the Right Model of Water and Wastewater Governance in Mexico? Lessons from a Case Study in the Lerma-Chapala Watershed.

The integrated water resource management (IWRM) literature privileges the watershed (river basin) as the appropriate unit for analysis. The paradigm is predicated on the assumption that all stakeholders within a river basin will be able and willing to cooperate in appropriate adequate water management across political and geographical boundaries.

From a geographical scale (and bio-physical) standpoint, the watershed is the right scale of analysis. A basin/watershed is the unit of analysis that encompasses all the elements (bio-physical, communities, government). From the political boundaries’ perspective, the watershed council crosses political borders. Therefore, using watersheds as units of analysis presents substantial implementation challenges to policy-makers. From a governance perspective, the watershed council offers an interesting yet complex model of shared authority. In this multi-stakeholder, round-table process, the final authority for water allocation does not reside within the watershed council but within the government. Thus, the degree to which the Mexican government shares responsibilities (and authority) is substantially limited.

in this talk, I discuss the results of my research on water and wastewater policy in Mexico. Driven by a theoretical interest in institutional analysis, and drawing on two years of in-depth field research in the Lerma-Chapala watershed, I conducted a cross-state comparative examination of wastewater policies in the five states that share territory with(the Lerma-Chapala watershed: State of Mexico, Queretaro, Jalisco, Guanajuato and Michoacan.

Using the Lerma-Chapala river basin as a case study, I analyze the formal and informal rules of the river basin council, finding that informal rules are substantially more important than formal rules, thus causing institutional instability. I also demonstrate that there is a chasm between Mexican environmental and wastewater policies. This chasm is caused primarily by differences between target actors, lack of institutional coordination between environmental and water-focused agencies, and an increasing jurisdictional overlap.Findings from this project offer sound evidence in favour of the criticisms that watershed councils have faced.

My water governance research has led me to explore two distinct but inter-related emerging research streams . The first one focuses on wastewater policy itself; the second one examines the effectiveness of watershed councils as appropriate models for water governance. In this talk I summarize the challenges I see in implementation of river basin councils as institutional innovations for integrated water management I also make a case that social science research on water management has focused largely on access and distribution of water, given its common-pool-resource nature, to the relative neglect of sanitation and wastewater. My goal in the near future is to bring both of these agendas together to create a holistic, integrated model of governance of water and wastewater.

What follows below my slides (hosted on Slide Share under a Creative Commons License – Non-Commercial, Attribution, Share-Alike) is an unedited crib of my talk. I borrow the term “crib” from Dr. danah boyd (who is a scholar of social media and youth) who publishes unedited typed notes of her talks and calls them crib. A crib of her latest research can be found here.

Good evening, and thank you everyone for coming. Thanks, first of all, to Doug and Jered for inviting me. I am very honored and flattered to be speaking to such an engaged group of citizens. I hope my talk will provide you with a quick overview of the way in which I think about water issues, and hopefully, you’ll learn some interesting stuff about water.

I have come to admit recently that I am a story teller. My research tells you a story. The story I’m interested in telling you has to do with my interest in questions of access to clean water and sanitation. I approach water problems from an interdisciplinary perspective, and while my PhD is interdisciplinary, I have a strong bias towards the social sciences. However, I also have an MBA and a chemical engineering background so I look at these issues from a variety of lenses.

If I had to summarize my research in a sentence, I can tell you that I have found tthat while we have the technology to treat water and recycle it (thus reducing the amount of water wasted) we don’t have the institutional arrangements to facilitate the adoption of these wastewater treatment technologies.

There is a reason why I always start my talks on water with a photograph like the one you are seeing on the cover slide. Yes, that is a photo of people collecting water in Sub-Saharan Africa. That is the quality of water these people are consuming. As you saw in the powerful documentary, Flow, there is a huge demand for clean drinking water in many developing countries. My work aims to contribute to increasing access to better water quality globally.

In the environmental public policy literature (and in every element of human life) we always have two elements: the politics and the policy. I confess that I practice a politics of fear, and a policy of hope. My notion of politics of fear means that I am more than happy to scare people with data. I have no qualms in scaring people and showing them the realities of environmental degradation. However, I am also a practitioner and an activist in some ways. Therefore, I practice a policy of hope. I offer potential technical and policy solutions. I also educate, not only my students, but everybody who will listen to me, about the need to look at water issues and not forget about how important they are in the light of current focus on climate change issues. We live in an interconnected world, so we must look at water issues as part of the global environmental change challenges.

Throughout my talk, I will share some terrifying facts that I hope will galvanize you to take action. And then I will close my talk by offering a few policy suggestions and highlighting the issues that need to be talked about. My hope is that after my talk, you will be compelled to engage in action to examine your own water consumption patterns and make substantial changes (for the good of humanity)

SLIDES 3 AND 4 – 3,900 children die every day from water-borne diseases. Nearly 41% of the world’s population lives in river basins under water stress. Less than 0.3% of the world’s water is freshwater. Less than 3% of the world’s water supply is available in lakes and rivers. With those facts, do you still feel compelled to take long showers, leave your tap open while brushing your teeth, wash the streets with the water hose? I sure hope not!

SLIDES 5 AND 6 – I love dispelling myths. That’s what made doing my doctoral research and my post-doctoral work so much fun. I enjoy shattering myths, like the one of Canada’s water abundance. If you juxtapose the graphs of water availability and water withdrawal, you’ll see that while Canada has a lot of water available (range of 1,700-5,00 m3/person/year) it also withdraws a lot of water (1,700 m3/person/year). If you do the math correctly, you’ll find that we will soon be in a negative water balance. As you can see, taken individually, these two graphs paint very different pictures. But that’s why we need to think about environmental problems in a holistic way. Canada is one of the countries with the highest water withdrawal rates (Slide 6). We need to re-think the way we approach water consumption and treatment.

Given my empirical research focus on Mexico (a country with one of the highest consumption rates by agricultural activities), it was somewhat shocking for me to find data indicating that in comparison, one (if not THE) main use of water in Canada is in energy production. (SLIDE 7).

There are numerous myths that I could dispel about the state of Canadian water, and numerous issues that need to be taken into account but have not. However, I am just going to highlight two (SLIDE 8). The first one is the rate of average daily water use in the residential sector. As you can see, it has been consistently in the vicinity of 300 litres per capita per day. The daily consumption of water in Africa is 10-20 litres per person per day. Canadians use between 15 and 20 times that. Time to re-think our consumptive patterns. The second graph shows the percentage of municipal population in sewers. Not 100%, as you can see. Well below. We need much more infrastructure for wastewater and sewerage.

SLIDE 9 – One of my most extensive research projects has been in the governance of wastewater and sanitation. This map shows you the distribution of wastewater facilities in Canada. I am currently working on launching a project to examine the state of wastewater policy across Canada, and I am hoping to use this as a baseline. Just for comparative purposes, Canada has less wastewater treatment facilities than the Lerma-Chapala river basin in Mexico does. Rather surprising, eh? In many ways, Canada’s state of sanitation wastewater and infrastructure appears to be much worse than Mexico.

SLIDE 10 – I will admit that I am a big proponent of water metering and water pricing as a policy mechanism to reduce water overconsumption and waste. I do not adhere to the idea of the commodification of water, and I confess that I still need to do more research on privatization of water supplies to define my position. But I am a firm believer that water should NOT be wasted. And I think that putting a price on water and measuring the supply will definitely help minimize excessive withdrawals. If you pay for it, you’ll think twice about wasting it. From the graph you can see that Canada has the cheapest cost of water ($ 0.31/cubic metre vs. $2.36/cubic metre in Germany). Again, time to re-think our consumptive patterns.

SLIDE 11 – I’m going to turn now to three tools that have helped me re-think the way I approach water problems. The first one is the concept of water stress. I have written on water stress previously on my blog, and I just want to show you that there are MANY areas all over North America under high water stress. Canada included.

SLIDE 12 – The second concept I’ve been exploring is the idea of virtual water (I also recently wrote about virtual water on my blog). Virtual water is the amount of water embedded in food or other products needed. For example, to manufacture 1 cup of coffee, you need 140 litres. That cup of coffee you are downing every morning? Yes, 140 litres of water were used in it. Time to re-think our behavioral patterns. I have personally shifted my diet from primarily meat to primarily vegetarian (producing meat consumes way more resources than vegetables).

SLIDE 13 – Finally, the third concept I’ve been exploring is the idea of a water footprint. Similar to the term coined by Dr. Mathis Wackernagel and Dr. Bill Rees (coincidentally, Dr. Wackernagel and I obtained our PhDs from The University of British Columbia, albeit in different programmes. Also, I do know the work of Dr. Rees very well), the water footprint borrows the main conceptual framework from the ecological footprint. The water footprint of a nation is defined as the volume of water needed to produce goods and serices consumed by the inhabitants of the country. I have also written about water footprint on my blog, but not to a large extent. However, there is an actual blog where the authors disseminate their findings on water footprinting. You can read it here. You can guess, yes – one of the highest water footprints is that of the United States of America. Not shocking, eh? Canada is, sadly, lagging not much behind.

SLIDE 14 – I would like to begin closing my talk (I promised it’d be short!) by re-emphasizing the issues I’ve been talking about in my research in the past five years. We need to start focusing on ways to close the hydrological cycle. What do I mean by that? I mean that we need to start paying attention on the red arrows in the graph you are looking at right now in this slide (14). We need to consider how we are going to treat water to the quality level we need. We also need to ensure that when we talk about water, we don’t talk solely about access to water, but also access to sanitation facilities and wastewater treatment. If we treat more water, we can replenish our water bodies. However, of course, it would be smarter if we didn’t consume so much water and/or if we didn’t pollute it in the first place.

SLIDE 15 – Finally, as I promised, I’m going to give you hope. I think that the biggest hope I have is that the documentary you saw tonight, the talks that my fellow presenters and I gave, and the interaction you will most definitely have with the exhibitors in the back of the room (Council of Canadians, Oxfam, Township of Langley’s Water Wise) will shape how you will behave in regards to water from now on.

I hope that Canadian politicians and bureaucrats realize that we need a cohesive, coherent and smart and sound nation-wide water policy.

I hope that Canada improves in regards to its inventories of water and water balances.

I hope that everybody in Canada begins to think about water and the hydrological cycle in an integrated way.

And I hope that you learned something from my talk. Feel free to contact me via e-mail, Twitter or dropping a comment on my blog. I am always available for speaking engagements, to talk to students and the public, and to share whatever little I have learned in regards to environmental public policy and water governance.

THANK YOU.

Traditionally, social science scholars have been preoccupied with issues of water availability, to the detriment of the study of polluted effluents. This attention is partially warranted given that according to the most recent statistics by the World Water Assessment Project, nearly 50% of the global population will be living in areas of high water stress (Revenga 2005, WWAP 2005).

Interestingly, the concept of the hydrological cycle (a natural science idea) seems to be somewhat absent in the mind of policy-makers and social scientists alike. For the past five years, I have been working (Pacheco-Vega 2005a, b, Pacheco-Vega 2008) on highlighting the closed nature of the hydrological cycle and the need to reduce the amount of water we pollute. Undertaking a global water balance allows us to understand the implications of water pollution, the morbidity associated with contaminated drinking water, the prevalence of waterborne diseases and the need for secondary and tertiary wastewater treatment.

UNEP/GRID-Arendal (2002), Urban water cycle, Available at http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/urban_water_cycle (Accessed 14 February 2009)

2008 was declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Sanitation, although it is quite clear that wastewater and sanitation aren’t the main focus of social science water research. However, as it can be seen from the urban water cycle graphic shown above, there is still a lot of room for improvement. All those wastewater streams can be improved in quantity (volume reduction at the source using ecological or low-water toilets) and quality (primary/secondary treatment at the source using domestic wastewater treatment plants).

If we are really going to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target to reduce by half the proportion of the 2,6 billion people without access to basic sanitation by 2015, we need to start from the basics.

References and further reading

Benidickson, J. (2007) The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage. Vancouver, UBC Press.

Pacheco-Vega, R. (2005a ) “Applying the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to wastewater management policy in the Lerma-Chapala River Basin”. Presented at the UNU-INWEH/UNESCO-MAB-IHP International Workshop “Water and Ecosystems: Water Resources Management in Diverse Ecosystems and Providing for Human Needs”, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. June 14-16, 2005.

Pacheco-Vega, R. (2005b) “Institutional analysis within the Lerma-Chapala Region: New challenges for watershed management”. Presented at the conference “Institutional Analysis for Environmental Decision-Making: A Workshop”. Fort Collins, Colorado, USA. Jan 28 and 29, 2005

Pacheco-Vega, R. (2008) “Strengthening effective wastewater governance in Mexico: Is there a role for river basin councils?” Presented at the Environmental Studies Association of Canada Meeting, Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Congress, June 2008, Vancouver, Canada

Photo credit: The Joy of the Mundane

I know that I have always chosen difficult and non-explored questions for my own research, and in this regard, I have created some sort of a niche because very few people study the governance of wastewater. Amongst those very few Canadian scholars who have done work in wastewater and that I know of are Dr. Arn Keeling (whose PhD dissertation was an environmental history of wastewater in Vancouver) and Dr. Jaimie Benidickson (whose book, “The Culture of Flushing“, is a great environmental and social history of flushing in Canada, the United States and Great Britain).

My own work hasn’t dealt with Canadian wastewater, but I do have a fairly solid understanding of the way things work here. I am sure you’ll find it appalling that the city of Victoria, the capital of the province of British Columbia, does NOT have a wastewater treatment plant. The effluent comes straight into the ocean (with some preliminary screening).

A recent post by Matt Collinge about water quality in False Creek reminded me of how little do people in Vancouver AND in Canada think about wastewater. This is something that is prevalent at the larger scale. Professor Dickinson indicates that this is part of “the culture of flushing”, or what I often call, the OOSOOM phenomenon (out of sight, out of mind).

One of my personal pet peeves is that both scholars and non-academics in Canada are SO focused on climate change issues that sometimes they forget other environmental problems that have NOT been solved, including solid waste management (Vancouver’s landfill is about to be entirely full) and wastewater management (we are nowhere near some of the developing countries’ technologies for wastewater treatment, hard to believe as that may be).

My research focus in the area of water policy (I’ve done research in other areas) has examined primarily the role of institutions and the types of rules found in wastewater governance, and the role of watershed councils in strengthening sanitation policy. I found, after that presentation, and having had discussions with other scholars, that I will have to pursue two separate agendas in the future: one on wastewater governance itself and one on watershed councils, and I am very excited about this.

I am curious to know if my readers do think about water scarcity more than they think about what happens once they flush the toilet. Or does even water come into their minds, with so much focus on climate change issues? What do you think?