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Wastewater from sanitation contains several scarce resources that can be reused for purposes of energy and food production. Sanitation infrastructures, however, are often overlooked in debates on circular food systems, while the role of sanitation could be pivotal in combatting resource depletion facing agriculture. Transitioning sanitation infrastructures to support circular systems also needs a thorough understanding of the sanitation practices involved, as resource-oriented sanitation systems require a de-routinization in how we make use of toilets and deal with wastewater. Instead, novel sanitation practices are needed for circular developments around sanitation to become successfully part of daily routines and ensure the reuse potential of wastewater. This research paper focuses on understanding how sanitation practices are shaped and embedded and its implications for the re-routinization of novel sanitation practices. A mixed-method research design has been adopted comparing sanitation practices and infrastructures in three distinct neighborhoods within the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region. First, a survey was conducted that enabled the typology of neighborhoods. Second, in-depth interviews in three neighborhoods were conducted to uncover the embeddedness of sanitation practices. Results highlight the importance of re-routinizing practice when linking sanitation to food systems and list five mechanisms that may help normalizing novel sanitation practices.

With over half the world’s population now living in cities, urban resilience has become a leading global challenge as can be seen in the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda (Arti...

Urban green spaces are crucial for citizens’ wellbeing. Nonetheless, many Latin American cities struggle to provide sufficient and equitable green space distribution for their citizens. By looking at the Chilean capital Santiago as an example, this paper examines whether the growing urban agriculture movement provides a feasible opportunity to increase public urban green space access. It does so by using the policy arrangement approach to analyse change and stability in two policy domains: urban green space planning and urban agriculture. The paper investigates urban green spaces and urban agriculture and the role of practitioners, urban planners and policymakers. The analysis found opportunities for urban agriculture to facilitate the expansion of urban green spaces in Santiago if policy mechanisms enable private or public spaces to be maintained by citizen organizations. Such mechanisms may, however, encounter resistance from public agencies, as it is unresolved who is involved and who benefits from urban agriculture. The paper concludes that urban agriculture is an opportunity for urban greening in Santiago, although changes are needed in how green areas are planned and conceived. Additionally, urban agriculture should not be understood as a substitute for parks but as a complementary form of green space provision with a distinctive value.

The potential role of households as ‘co-managers’ of energy in smart grids is widely discussed in the social science literature. Much remains uncertain about the social relations and practices emerging around novel smart grid technologies and their contribution to sustainability. Drawing on 14 ‘show-and-tell’ home tours with householders in a smart grid trial, an analysis is presented of how home energy management (HEM) is performed in everyday life. The focus is on three technologies: monitoring technologies, smart heat pumps and home batteries. How and why householders do (not) engage with energy management during the pilot project is described. When householders participate in HEM practices, they gain energy management understandings and an awareness of smart grid objectives. Since HEM practices are shared between householders and actors from the energy provision system, they display particular ways of distributing responsibilities, power and agency over technologies, experts and householders. The time and space granted to these three smart grid technologies are shown to depend on the trust relationships between householders and the more or less absent providers of technologies and services. These insights emphasize the need to develop smart grid solutions reflexively with respect to the different spaces and practices in households in which they operate.

Sub-Saharan African cities like Kampala face challenges with rapid urbanization and impacts of climate change. These challenges have exacerbated the struggle to provide adequate infrastructural and socio-ecological services to Kampala's growing poor. Based on a social practices perspective, this paper presents a study of emergent vulnerabilities at the urban Nexus of water, energy and food (WEF) in the informal settlements of Bwaise and Kanyogoga. We employ methods of observation, interviews, focus group discussions and a vision-building workshop to explore the growing vulnerabilities of poor households as they daily navigate deteriorating water quality, rising energy prices and food insecurity. Results indicate that most household-level vulnerabilities relate to energy poverty. Households scale back on water treatment practices such as boiling and the cooking of highly-nutritious yet energy-demanding foods such as beans in efforts to conserve charcoal. Emergent practices of everyday resilience-building include the use of biomass briquettes as an alternative to solid charcoal as well as social networks and capital which allow households to borrow food and energy. We suggest the notion of ‘precarious consumption’ as a tool for understanding emergent everyday vulnerabilities in relation to the urban WEF Nexus service provision and resilience policy-making in cities of the Global South.

Contemporary packages of housing retrofit equipment are based on models of expected energy savings with regard to globally standardized thermal comfort levels. Previous research shows that the energy savings realised after a housing retrofit is substantially lower than expected. Attempts to reduce energy demand by physical re-design, utilising technical standards for thermal comfort as well as financial incentives, tend to ignore the role of retrofit interventions in the construction of everyday practices of thermal comfort making. Thermal comfort practices of heating, cooling and ventilation are moderated by specific householders’ motivations which constitute ‘wants’ and emerging ‘needs’ in the interaction with the housing retrofit equipment. This paper proposes that the interactions between the retrofitted buildings and the householders are the sum of material affordances, as signified by the design of the housing equipment on the one hand, and the practical affordances in practices-as-performances on the other. The study presents comfort practices in relation to recently retrofitted low-income housing estates in Beijing, Mianyang (Sichuan province, South-west China) and Amsterdam on the basis of 50 qualitative interviews with householders in each city. The paper concludes that the expected energy saving is counteracted by a poor match between conventional retrofit packages and householders’ considerations about their thermal comfort. To better reduce energy demand and to mitigate energy poverty, retrofit packages should provide adaptive thermal comfort as preferred by householders, rather than fixed or tightly specified thermal comfort. Such a perspective may support a more flexible and inclusive use of housing equipment as part of retrofit programs.

This article provides a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary overview of the phosphorus cycle through the wastewater and agri-food system. While mineral phosphorus stocks are finite, the use of mined phosphorus is accompanied with many losses, leading to pollution of water bodies. Recovering phosphorus from human excreta can contribute to more efficient use of phosphorus to ensure its availability for food production in the future. Phosphorous can be recovered through different recovery technologies and consequently used in agriculture via different recycling routes. Each recycling route has its own particularities in terms of interactions with technologies, actors and the environment to bring the recovered phosphorus back into agriculture. In this literature review, we adopt a socio-ecological-technical approach to map three phosphorus-recycling routes, via municipal sewage sludge, struvite recovered from municipal wastewater and source-separated urine. We firstly show that improvements are still needed in all three routes for achieving high P recovery efficiency, and a combination of these recycling routes are needed to achieve maximum recovery of phosphorus. Second, we identify key issues for each recycling route that currently limit the use of recovered phosphorus in agriculture. We indicate where interaction between disciplines is needed to improve recycling routes and identify gaps in research on how recovered phosphorus accesses agriculture.

This article seeks to analyse recent shifts in goals concerning domestic energy uses. Drawing on two Dutch smart grid projects, we observe that in the smart grid transition the balancing of (renewable) supply and demand in energy grids becomes the key priority of grid managers. This shift becomes translated at the household level through so called ‘teleoaffective structures’ of energy practices which motivate and direct the behaviour of householders towards flexible timing-of-demand. New grid objectives are codified in the rules of social practice concerning the use of flexibility instruments (notably time-of-day pricing) and are materialized in monitoring devices, smart appliances, and energy storage. We investigated which domestic practices are most open for flexible timing-of-use. Cleaning practices were found to be most suitable for demand-side response, whereas practices implied in ambiance regulation, leisure, cooking and eating, align only with some flexibility instruments. Next, an analytical focus on linkages between social practices was used to specify opportunities and barriers to sustainable domestic energy consumption. In the concluding section, we argue that householder engagement with sustainability goals should be safeguarded from the flexibility instruments, goals and strategies that seem to turn this engagement into grid management performed for financial benefits only.

This paper explains why and how deep tube well as a safe drinking water technology has become dominant in mitigating the arsenic crisis in rural Bangladesh. We do so by applying insights from the Multi-Level Perspective on transitions in explaining changes in the safe socio-technical drinking water regime in rural Bangladesh. Data about seven dimensions of regime change were gathered from key actors through in-depth interviews, focus groups sessions, a survey, and a workshop. The findings reveal that with the introduction of deep tube well as an arsenic mitigation technology, the observed changes in the seven dimensions help to transform the existing safe drinking water regime in order to re-stabilise it. Technological attributes, symbolic meaning, industry structures, and techno-scientific knowledge have supported an evolving dominance of the deep tube well. Besides, user practices as well as related infrastructures have adapted to the use of deep tube wells, and new policies stimulated its application. We argue that the dimensions of the technology change in the existing regime are consistent with the features of incremental innovation. By offering such insights, we show the relevance of the Multi-Level Perspective on transitions to analyse socio-technical innovation in a developing world context.

Public concerns surrounding landscape conservation, noise pollution and impacts on bird populations are commonly incorporated into the planning phase of wind energy projects. However, public involvement tends to be highly localized and procedural, aimed at informing local stakeholders and gaining their acceptance for implementation. At the same time, other ways of engaging the public have emerged that move beyond invited stakeholder participation to facilitate the co-production of wind energy technologies and the landscapes in which they are placed. This paper systematically reviews the academic literature with the aim of identifying and characterizing these modes of co-production. A total of 230 papers published between 2009 and 2019 that report on public engagement with wind energy were included in our review. From this sample, we characterise public engagement into three modes of co-production: (1) local co-production, in spatially proximate wind energy projects; (2) collective co-production, performed through collaboration among different actors in the wind energy sector, joined ownership or consumption of wind energy; and (3) virtual co-production, mediated through information technology. These different modes of co-production cover a broad spectrum of ways in which local and non-local publics engage in decisions about where, when, how and by whom wind energy projects are designed, developed and managed over time. Combined, they can offer guidance for future research on how the wind energy sector can further support a transition to sustainable and inclusive energy systems.

This paper examines the participation of Dutch households in a smart and sustainable energy transition. Particular attention is paid to new forms of cooperation that are arising between households (horizontal opening-up) and between households and service providers (vertical opening-up). Data are drawn from an online survey and a focus group discussion among householders who have some experience with sustainable energy practices. To guide the analysis we discern three energy management practices that come along with the advent of smart energy systems (energy monitoring, renewable energy production and time-shifting), and three social arrangements entailing different ways of organising these practices (private, horizontal and vertical arrangements). While survey respondents, in general, prove to be supportive of both vertically and horizontally arranged energy management practices, we also find that they run into specific privacy and autonomy problems that shape or even impede their participation. In addition, the focus group shows that shared understandings of conventional energy systems and shared experiences with alternative schemes create strong parallels between anticipated arrangements of new practices. It is concluded that decentralised systems are particularly promising for promoting householder participation, as they enable the bundling of energy management practices and the renegotiation of horizontal–vertical relationships.

Although classified by the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) as unimproved sanitation facilities, public toilets still play a critical role in eliminating open defecation in informal settlements. We explored perspectives of toilet operators on opportunities and barriers to operation and maintenance (O&M) of public toilets in informal settlements. A cross-sectional study design was used. Up to 20 in-depth interviews were used to obtain data on the experiences of public toilet operators. Thematic content analysis was used. Ressults show that opportunities for improving O&M include; operation of public toilets is a source of livelihood; operators are knowledgeable on occupational risks, and the community is involvedin sanitation activities. Barriers to effective O&M include; high operation costs, failure to break even and a lack of investments in occupational health Therefore, there is need to recognise the significance of public toilets as a viable alternative to open defecation in areas where ownership of private sanitation facilities is difficult. Failure to observe the health and safety of toilet operators may further compromise O&M.

This chapter discusses political consumerism in the context of a transformation towards a low-carbon electricity system. Over the past decades, deregulation, liberalisation, and privatisation have opened up spaces for Western consumers to influence the greening of energy provision and consumption via the market. Electricity system reconfiguration means a growing diversity of home-based energy devices that engage consumers with energy in new and altered ways. With the use of smart meters, solar panels, and home batteries, passive energy users change into prosumers and comanagers of the grid. To understand the power of consumers in coshaping low-carbon electricity systems, the chapter shows the need to consider the politics of intermediation and technology. The chapter concludes that energy devices afford new individual and collective forms of engaging with energy, which opens up room for political consumerism not only in relation to energy production and consumption but also with regards to digital technologies and information flows.

Smart energy grids and smart meters are commonly expected to promote more sustainable ways of living. This paper presents a conceptual framework for analysing the different ways in which smart grid developments shape – and are shaped by – the everyday lives of residents. Drawing upon theories of social practices and the concept of informational governance, the framework discerns three categories of ‘information flows’: flows between household-members, flows between households and energy service providers, and flows between local and distant households. Based on interviews with Dutch stakeholders and observations at workshops we examine, for all three information flows, the changes in domestic energy practices and the social relations they help to create. The analysis reveals that new information flows may not produce more sustainable practices in linear and predictable ways. Instead, changes are contextual and emergent. Second, new possibilities for information sharing between households open up a terrain for new practices. Third, information flows affect social relationships in ways as illustrated by the debates on consumer privacy in the Netherlands. An exclusive focus on privacy, however, deviates attention from opportunities for information disclosure by energy providers, and from the significance of transparency issues in redefining relationships both within and between households.

This paper reviews the contribution the social sciences can make to the challenge of providing access to sustainable sanitation services and infrastructures for billions of people, in both the over- and underdeveloped parts of the world. The paper reviews and discusses three particular social scientific topics relevant for the sanitation challenge: the nature of socio-technical change, the issue of multilevel governance, and the role of the citizen-consumer. It is argued that sanitation is as much a social as it is a technical issue, and that the role of social scientific knowledge needs to be strengthened and given more attention in this context. The key contribution from the social sciences is to be found in its capacity to help widen the narrow, technical definitions of sanitation by including actors and their needs and belief systems, and by highlighting the alternative socio-technical tools and governance arrangements that are instrumental in moving beyond some of the dead-end roads of traditional water engineering and sanitation provision.

In Uganda, environmental and natural resource management is decentralized and has been the responsibility of local districts since 1996. This environmental management arrangement was part of a broader decentralization process and was intended to increase local ownership and improve environmental policy; however, its implementation has encountered several major challenges over the last decade. This article reviews some of the key structural problems facing decentralized environmental policy in this central African country and examines these issues within the wider framework of political decentralization. Tensions have arisen between technical staff and politicians, between various levels of governance, and between environmental and other policy domains. This review offers a critical reflection on the perspectives and limitations of decentralized environmental governance in Uganda. Our conclusions focus on the need to balance administrative staff and local politicians, the mainstreaming of local environmental policy, and the role of international donors.

This chapter examines the emergence and development of smart grids from a sociological perspective. In particular we draw on ‘social practice theory’ to understand the dynamics of domestic energy consumption and production in emerging smart energy configurations. There are two focal points in the analysis. First, we will concentrate on a specific type of social practices, so called ‘e-practices’. This is a term that we coin to refer to all those practices in and around the home that involve the consumption, conservation, monitoring, generation and storage of energy. Second, we incorporate ‘information flows’ as a key element in our understanding of the emergence of new e-practices. Although the term “smart” has been defined in various ways, a common denominator is that the generation, handling and use of data, information and knowledge is part of what makes a system smart. After introducing both concepts, we outline a conceptual framework around e-practices and information flows that can guide social scientific research on smart energy systems. We also illustrate how this framework can be put to use empirically, based on data that have been gathered in the Netherlands. The chapter is concluded with a research agenda that outlines theoretical and methodological challenges for future smart grid research.

Strategic niche management (SNM) implies that new technologies are applied in so-called niches, in which they are protected against mainstream market selection. A major question currently subject to debate is through which processes niches can bring about any wider changes at the level of socio-technical regimes. This paper examines this question, using present-day developments in innovation in sanitation in Western Europe as an example. It is concluded that although SNM theorists emphasize the importance of (first- and second-order) learning, such learning processes are often hampered in practice. This may be due to the fact that existing niche-based approaches put too much emphasis on technological experimentation rather than on experimentation with forms of social organization. Therefore, attention should be redirected to sustainability concepts and guiding principles rather than technologies. As an addition to existing approaches, the authors suggest and elaborate on a new form of niche management called conceptual niche management.

Network‐bound systems such as water and energy systems are increasingly confronted with environmental problems that cannot be solved without changing their modes of provision. More than any other flow provided through a network‐bound system, the waste water flow comes very close to intimate personal and social life, complicating the introduction of environmental innovations in this sector. Using the concepts of trust and identity, questions concerning changing consumer roles in two cases of Decentralised Sanitation and Reuse Systems in the Netherlands are addressed. In both cases the building of trust within provider networks and between consumers and providers, as well as the possibility for consumers and providers to identify themselves with the aims of the project were key factors determining the success or failure of environmental innovations in waste water flows.

This paper assesses the uptake of environmental innovation practices to cope with plastic waste in Kenyan urban centres at the interface of solid waste management and plastic production systems. The Multi Level Perspective on Technological Transitions is used to evaluate 7 innovation pathways of plastic waste prevention, reuse or recycling. An assessment is made as to whether the innovations lead to changes in the regimes of waste management and plastic production and eventually an integrated regime for plastic production and reuse. The study comprises of a review of policy documents and statistics, site visits and in-depth interviews with main actors involved in plastic waste related innovation. The comparative analysis of social network building, actor expectations and learning processes in the 7 innovation routes reveals that Kenya is still far from having a well-aligned plastic production-cum-waste regime that enables plastic waste prevention, recycling and handling practices. Innovations by yard shop owners and home grown industries contribute to an aligned plastic waste recycling regime, where PET exporters, bio-degradable plastic sellers and CBO collectors fail to do so. All innovation actors face a lack of governmental recognition and guidelines to close the loop of plastic production and waste handling.

As cities expand and environmental challenges multiply, linear relations between resource consumption and waste need to be broken, with outputs cycled back as inputs. Twenty years of industrial symbiosis research has provided ample evidence and experience how to close material and energy cycles in industrial systems. The more recent urban symbiosis literature develops a similar perspective and experience on closing waste–resource cycles for a different social system: cities. An urban symbiosis analysis on how to close urban waste–resource cycles has to focus on geographical boundaries, local partnerships, and policy interventions. In conducting a detailed case study of Rotterdam Energy Approach and Planning (REAP), this paper aims to identify how urban actors, notably local authorities, can facilitate improved urban resource management to mitigate climate change. REAP incorporates energy and water reuse in an urban area, using by-products as resources in different urban functions. It is coordinated by Rotterdam's local authority, in partnership with architects and academic institutions in its design, and housing corporations and energy companies in its implementation. The methodology to assess REAP includes a review of policy documents, site visits and in-depth interviews. This study revealed the central role of local authorities in governing urban symbiosis projects like REAP; the need for increased private-sector participation in the design stage of such projects; and the necessity to encourage dialogue, learning and flexibility in the governance of urban resource management.

Ecological modernisation theory has been developed so far mainly with respect to the production sphere. In order to apply the theory to the sphere of consumption, it needs to be enriched with some of the central concepts from the sociology of consumption. What results is a contextual model of (domestic) consumption which combines an actor‐oriented approach with a system‐of‐provision perspective of consumer behaviour. In conclusion, the relevance of the proposed model for research on the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption is discussed.

Urban sanitation and solid waste sectors are under significant pressure in East Africa due to the lack of competent institutional capacity and the growth of the region’s urban population. This book presents and applies an original analytical approach to assess the existing socio-technical mixtures of waste and sanitation systems and to ensure wider access, increase flexibility and ecological sustainability. It shows how the problem is not the current diversity in waste and sanitation infrastructures and services and variety of types and scales of technology, of formal and informal sector involvement, and of management and ownership modes. The book focuses instead on the lack of an integrative approach to managing and upgrading of the various waste and sanitation configurations and services so as to ensure wider access, flexibility and sustainability for the low income populations who happen to be the main stakeholders. This approach, coined "Modernized Mixtures", serves as a nexus throughout the book. The empirical core addresses the waste and sanitation challenges and debates at each scale - from the micro-level (households) to the macro-level (international support) - and is based on the results of a five-year-long interdisciplinary, empirical research program. It assesses the socio-technical diversity in waste and sanitation and provides viable solutions to sanitation and waste management in East Africa. This book provides students, researchers and professional in environmental technology, sociology, management and urban planning with an integrated analytical perspective on centralized and decentralized waste and sanitation configurations and tools for improvement in the technology, policy and management of sanitation and solid waste sectors.

In developed countries the sanitation challenge is to initiate a transition from strongly centralized, water-based infrastructure regimes towards more sustainable, source-separation oriented, sanitation regimes. This calls for social scientific research and demonstration on different levels and scales, including concept development, institutional learning and governance building. In the developing world the sanitation challenge is to provide sanitation services to the poor and the very poor, without compromising on sustainability. New configurations employing the best practices of sanitation technology and management for rural and urban contexts are needed. The sanitation challenge in both worlds is to go beyond traditional dichotomies between ‘small, appropriate’ and ‘modern/advanced’ technologies and to develop rural and urban sanitation with a mix of scales, strategies, technologies, payment systems and decision-making structures, that better fit the physical and human systems for which they are designed.

This chapter introduces what the social sciences can offer to sanitation and the challenges that lay ahead of providing sustainable access to sanitation to billions of people in both the Western as well as the developing world. It outlines three social scientific perspectives to the sanitation challenge: that of socio-technical change, multi-level governance and consumer studies. The sanitation challenge is three fold: in the Western world the challenge is to initiate a transition from strongly centralized infrastructures towards flexible and sustainable forms, in the developing world to provide access to sanitation for the poor, while the challenge in both worlds is to move beyond traditional dichotomies between small and large, appropriate and modern technologies. Lastly the organization of this volume is explained.

In various Western European countries pilot projects have been set-up in which new waste water management technologies are being experimented in a domestic setting. Domestic end-users often play a crucial role in these projects: ranging from being the main initiators to being the key factor in their collapse. This chapter presents a theoretical appreciation of end-user roles and perspectives in sanitary niche experiments, and develops a toolkit to better understand and experiment with end-user roles and perspectives in new sanitation projects. Subsequently, this theoretical framework is used to analyze two pilot projects in the Netherlands (Sneek and Culemborg). The chapter concludes that an end-user view is instrumental in getting demonstration projects realized as it opens up new ways to link sanitary solutions to end-users’ socio-cultural concerns. Furthermore, such an end-user view allows for the successful development and implementation of new sanitation concepts, linking sanitation systems and end-users in various ways.

Urbanization has brought about concentrations of people in densely populated settlements, resulting in the generation of waste water that needs to be disposed off in a hygienic way to avoid the outbreak of diseases. Decisions on what area to sewer, the nature of sewer schemes and treatment works to be used, and the kind of collection and transport system to adopt is often complex and difficult to make. This chapter (re)considers urban sewers and treatment works as the interplay of flows, networks and spaces, and puts forward a conceptual framework for decision-making. It examines current and future sanitation structures in Kampala and Kisumu in terms of sanitation flows, sanitary networks and demands for space. Knowledge of such sanitation structures serves as an input to the assessment of opportunities for so-called Modernized Mixtures of sanitation systems in cities around Lake Victoria.

Wastewater flows of metropolitan cities and their downstream use for irrigation are often associated with technical systems. However, an engineering approach on its own will leave questions unanswered at the socio-technical and institutional level. Research was carried out in Hanoi, Vietnam, on the use of polluted irrigation water in periurban agriculture. Apart from outlining the physical features of the urban wastewater chain, a supply chain approach has been applied. Stakeholders along the management chain of the conventional urban wastewater system resemble spot markets (independent actors who act in self-interest) as described in supply chain management literature. In Hanoi, the conventional approach towards wastewater management consists of a strict separation of urban wastewater management from periurban agricultural use and a neglect of farmers as stakeholders in the chain. It is suggested that the use of wastewater in agriculture should be incorporated into urban water management systems and that farmers should be included as acting stakeholders in the management of the wastewater chain. This paper concludes with suggestions for urban water management that are necessary to combine urban wastewater management with periurban agriculture.

Redesigning large technological systems requires a thorough understanding of the social processes that lie behind such dynamics. In this chapter, I wish to emphasise the interaction between energy and water systems on the one hand, and citizen-consumers as eventual users on the other. Especially in water and energy systems, consumers have so far been treated as non-descriptive ‘captive consumers’ or end-users. Due to processes of liberalisation of utility markets and ecological modernisation of production and consumption, this captive consumer role is changing into a variety of roles for consumers in the operation and environment-induced change of systems of water energy provision.

A Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis with correlations between parameters is applied to a Markov-chain model that is used to support the choice of a replacement heart-valve. The objective is to quantify the effects of uncertainty in and of correlations between probabilities of valve-related events on the life expectancies of four valve types. The uncertainty in the logit- and log-transformed parameters—mostly representing proba bilities and durations—is modeled as a multivariate normal distribution. The univariate distributions are obtained through values for the median and the 0.975 quantile of each parameter. Correlations between parameters are difficult to quantify. A sensitivity anal ysis is suggested to study their influences on the uncertainty in valve preference prior to further elicitation efforts. The results of the uncertainty analysis strengthen the con clusions from a preceding study, which did not include uncertainty in the model param eters, where the homograft turned out to be the best choice. It is concluded that the influence of correlations is limited in most cases. Preference statements become more certain when the correlation between valve types increases. Key words: uncertainty analysis; decision analysis; Monte Carlo simulation; Markov-chain; aortic valve. (Med Decis Making 1999; 19:276-286)

Economically favorable cleaner production measures could be particularly attractive for small-scale industry in developing countries. Research in Kenya indicated that cleaner production measures could generate promising results in reducing pollution levels at low costs. The small-scale industries are, however, constrained in implementing cleaner production by various attitudinal, organizational, technical and economic barriers. To introduce cleaner production methods successfully, the small-scale sector needs support, such as technical and financial incentives, from policy organizations and nongovernmental organizations. This requires better coordination of policy efforts and organization of small-scale enterprises, in particular because environmental improvements could be induced within enhanced industrial interactions.

Digital twins have emerged as novel technology in the wind energy sector that enables the design, monitoring and prediction of wind turbine performance. Despite growing attention on their potential, little is known about how digital twins are designed, by whom and how their design choices affect multiple aspects of decision making in the development of wind energy. Using a framework of co-production, this paper examines digital twins as boundary objects and the role of twinning as boundary work that involves an active process of design and affects multiple aspects of decision making in the development of wind energy. Our results demonstrate how the design of digital twins evolves throughout the twinning process, affected by regulation, choices of expert twinners on data and models, and what constitutes a matter of concern. We shed light on the role of these twinners in influencing which actors and their matters of concern are included and excluded during the twinning process. Our understanding of twinning as an active process of governance by design more clearly reveals how digital twins are not objective representations of reality, but a function of boundary work. We conclude that more transparency is needed over how digital twins are designed to enhance their role as technologies that foster a transition towards more sustainable energy systems and decision-making over wind energy technologies and their integration in landscapes.

Dit proefschrift onderzoekt de rol van lokale autoriteiten, en hun interacties met belanghebbenden, om klimaatmitigatie en -adaptatie in steden te besturen. Hiervoor is in dit proefschrift een conceptueel kader ontwikkeld dat gebaseerd is op de governance capaciteiten die lokale overheden bezitten; de wijze van sturing die zij inzetten om klimaatverandering bespreekbaar te maken en de invloed van lokale autoriteiten op verticale en horizontale actoren in een multi-level governance systeem. De belangrijkste onderzoeksvraag van deze studie is: Hoe besturen vooroplopende stedelijke autoriteiten klimaatsverandering, en hoe kunnen de effecten daarvan worden verbeterd?

The problems with plastic waste in Kenyan cities are increasing to alarming levels. Especially disposable packaging made of very light plastic materials continues to burden the environment as well as compromise management capacities for waste by city authorities. In light of this, major cities of Kenya have in the last two decades registered participation of formal and informal private actors with strategies to curtail the flow of plastic waste to the environment. This study argues that such strategies can be referred to as ‘innovations’withthe potential totransform the plasticwaste scenario in Kenya and further foster an integrative regime between solid waste management and plastic production systems for plastic waste management. Strategic niche management and Multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions that bases the success of an innovation on its actor networks, convergence of expectations and learning processes have been useful in the analysis of performance of the innovations. In-depth case studies on innovations in plastic waste management, plastic waste recycling and plastic prevention illustrate how and to what extent such innovations are able to transform the stultifying environmental condition and further become the foundation for developing an integrated regime for plastic waste management.

One of the measures that can help developing countries in meeting Target 10 of the Millennium Development Goals – halving the number of people without access to water and adequate sanitation by 2015 – is through a water sector reform. In this research the Malaysian water sector reform is assessed by answering the following questions: • How can we understand and explain the policy process of the reform? • To what extent have the outputs of the reform contributed to the realization of the reform’s objectives? and • To what extent has the water sector reform improved the operational efficiency and environmental effectiveness of water utilities? This research was approached from two theoretical perspectives: the policy arrangement approach and the policy evaluation approach. The policy arrangement approach provides the analytical tools to ascertain answers to the first question. This is done by thoroughly investigating the main discourses underpinning the water sector reform, the resources-power nexus, the actors and the rules applied and created in the reform process. The policy evaluation approach answers the remaining two questions from two aspects. First, by assessing the output efficacy of four institutional outputs against the reform objectives. Second, by assessing seven quantitative indicators related to the performance of water utilities on operational efficiency and environmental effectiveness. Chapter 1 takes us through the historical development of the Malaysian water supply sector from as early as the 19th century. The first water supply development has taken place in the Federated Malay States and the Strait Settlement under the British administration. Over the years, continuous investments have put Malaysia amongst countries with high access to drinking water in the world. As the country developed and economic development accelerated, public funding proved no longer able to satisfy budgets needed for water infrastructure development. Turning to private sector assistance has neither solved this problem, nor relieved state governments from financial burdens. Political and socio-economic reasons prohibit water from being priced at its actual costs. Low tariffs (and subsidised tariffs) do not only hamper water conservation, but also deprive water utilities from generating extra revenues to sustain operation and to expand services to new areas. Chapter 2 consists of two parts. The first part presents a general overview of water supply reform processes and explains the key concepts – equilibrium levels, efficiency, effectiveness, equity, competition and unbundling – which are highly relevant to the analysis of water supply reform in Malaysia and beyond. The second part discusses two theoretical frameworks used in this research: (1) the policy arrangement approach for understanding and analysing the reform process; and (2) the policy evaluation approach for measuring the outcomes of the reform on seven indicators: four for operational efficiency – non-revenue water, collection efficiency, unit production cost and customer complaints – and three for environmental efficiency – sludge management, water quality and information disclosure. The last section of this chapter formulates a theoretical framework for this research and explains how this framework helps to answer the research questions. Also Chapter 3 is divided into two parts. The first part reflects on the leading events of and driving forces behind the reform process. This includes re-visiting the policy decision of the National Water Resources Council made in 2003, the formation of the Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications right after the 2004 general elections, the commissioning of a major study and the amendment to the Federal Constitution. The reform accelerated the desire to address the presence of high non-revenue water, low water tariffs, weak regulation and the unviable financial mechanism for coping with the issue of under-investment and over-dependency on public funding in the water sector. The second part analyses the outcomes of the reform from four perspectives: regulation, water resource management, financial and operational issues. The analysis produced mixed results. Considerable positive achievements are clearly visible with regard to the role of the central regulator on regulation oversight, the financial mechanism of the PAAB and the corporatisation of state water departments. But the state water resources regulator has not shown promising results in safeguarding water resources. In Chapter 4, the water supply sector reform is analysed using the policy arrangement approach. The analysis shows a shift in water management towards the public control both at the federal and state government levels. This can be seen from the dominating corporatisation discourse, showing a growing tendency towards centralisation of water management. The shared-responsibility approach gives the federal government powers on water regulation and financing matters while reinforcing the dominant role of state governments on water provisioning and water resources. The dominant role of state actors in water is aided by their possession of vast resources – legal, water rights, financial – thus undermining the presence of market actors (private water utilities) in the sector. By the same token, several unprecedented rules emerged from the reform. The most noticeable one is the participation of the Prime Minister and his Deputy during the reform process. Others include the declassification of the public documents, drafts of WSIA and SPANA, from the official secret law to solicit public feedback, and the public hearings process involving members from the opposition parties as well as civil society. Chapter 5 presents the assessment of four operational efficiency indicators: non-revenue water, collection efficiency, unit production costs and customer complaints. The assessment was furthered investigated in two cases studies – PBAPP and SADA. It became evident that private water utilities are superior in managing water losses and collection efficiency compared to their counterparts in the public sector, while there is no clear distinction with regard to their capability in managing costs and customer complaints. This research re-affirms the contribution of nonreform factors to the performance of water utilities before and after the reform, and between private and public water utilities. The findings from the two cases studies confirm the general findings of this research. This chapter also highlights the importance of performance indicators (as a regulation tool) in the water sector in which successful reform depends considerably on the presence of reliable information. Chapter 6 analyses the performance of water utilities on three environmental effectiveness indicators: sludge management, water quality and information disclosure. Similar to Chapter 5, private water utilities demonstrate a higher compliance level to sludge management under the Environmental Quality Act 1974 and information disclosure requirements than their counterparts in the public sector. Both private and public utilities have a good compliance level in relation to the National Guideline for Drinking Water Quality Standard 2001 for water quality. Findings from the two case studies confirm the presence of a weak relation between the reform and the performance of water utilities on environmental effectiveness indicators. This chapter highlights the call from water utilities to the government to establish sludge treatment companies to spearhead the research and development activities in sludge recycling and to avoid direct discharge of raw sludge into streams. The majority of water utilities are aware of the mandatory information requirement under Section 29 WSIA. By the same token, civil society groups such as CAWP call for a greater information disclosure transparency by making all documents related to the function of NWSC and water utilities available to the public. Lastly, this chapter proposes for adoption of environmental indicators in measuring the performance of water utilities as well as to strengthen the link between information holders/disclosers and information users to facilitate greater transparency and democratic practices in the water sector. In conclusion, Chapter 7 answers the research questions as follows: (1) the policy process of the Malaysian water sector reform represents the current global trend in centralising water management within the public domain with a clear division of tasks between policy formulation, regulation oversight and service provision. State actors – the federal government on policy formulation, regulation and financing; state governments (through state water companies) on water provisioning and water resources – become dominant players in the water sector; it reduces the role of private water utilities to only a fraction of activities (i.e. treatment) within the entire value chain of water; and it strengthens close regulation oversight from the regulator. Lastly, there is a growing influence of civil society groups on the water sector; (2) the output effectiveness analysis (of the reform) has produced mixed results. Despite the fact that the central regulator, water corporations and the financier are proven to be the important institutions that meet the objectives, the state water resources regulator has not (yet) shown to be a significant institution in meeting the objective of safeguarding water resources; and (3) due to the timing of this research and limited data availability, it proved difficult to link the performance of water utilities on operational efficiency and environmental effectiveness to the reform. This study further concluded that the relevance of the policy arrangement approach and the policy evaluation approach frameworks for policy evaluation research are enhanced when they are used in combination. Moreover, the application of the latter to assess water sector performance in the data-poor environments experienced in this research presses for more use of expert judgments to complement incomplete and unreliable quantifiable datasets. It is suggested that further research be carried out over a longer time interval when required data are available, laws are fully enforced and the reform institutions are well functioning. Such research should involve a wider selection of case studies of the entire domain of water utilities using both theoretical frameworks. The immediate policy recommendations include the call to the government to consider measures to facilitate greater public participation in the policy making process of the reform, the consolidation of water management under a single water body and the establishment of a national and disclosed data bank for the water sector.

The urbanisation of poverty and informality in East African cities poses a threat to environmental health, perpetuates social exclusion and inequalities, and creates service gaps (UN-Habitat, 2008). This makes conventional sanitation provision untenable citywide, giving rise to the emergence of sanitation mixtures. Sanitation mixtures have different scales, institutional arrangements, user groups, and rationalities for their establishment, location, and management. For assessing the performance of both the mixtures as a whole and the different sanitation approaches constituting these mixtures, novel approaches for analyses are required. This thesis, therefore, departs from the centralised-decentralised approaches to a modernised mixtures (MM) approach in seeking a more inclusive assessment of sanitary configurations taking into account public and environmental health, accessibility and flexibility of sanitation systems as sustainability criteria. To achieve this, the four objectives formulated for this thesis are to: 1. Make an inventory of sanitary systems in Kampala and Kisumu. 2. Assess and map sanitary systems along MM dimensions in Kampala and Kisumu. 3. Assess sustainability of sanitary systems on defined MM criteria in Kampala and Kisumu. 4. Enhance insights on the applicability of MM criteria as conceptual model, assessment and prescriptive tool for sanitary mixtures in East African cities. Case study cities were chosen from a typology of primary and secondary cities that have urban sewer systems since colonial times. The two cities were deemed to offer rich cases that would give a general outlook of other East Africa cities, thus can offer possibilities for generalization. The thesis utilised a multi-method and multi-level approach in data collection and analysis. A multicriteria analysis is used in sustainability performance assessment of sanitation systems based on defined MM criteria. Firstly, modernisation debates and resultant modernities in sanitation provision were reviewed in Chapter 2. The review shows that Western modernisation and resultant modernities and their structures of service provision have not resonated well in developing countries. Consequently, alternative theories that dispute a universal approach to modernity emerged to offer alternatives to modernisation. Alternative options are characterised by multiple rationalities, diversity and multiplicity. Modernities in terms of sanitation provision are further operationalized as competition between the proponents of centralised versus decentralised solutions. A third way of looking at sanitation modernisation that is more inclusive is advanced through the introduction of the MM approach. In Chapter 3, the presence of urban sewer systems in Kampala and Kisumu cities is assessed. The results show that urban systems are of medium scale and serve about 10% of the city population. They are publicly owned and managed by public enterprises under new public management. Besides, they are conventionally designed, constructed and operated without the involvement of end-users. Treatment plants are either overloaded, underutilised or treatment stages are mismatched. Consequently, about 30-70% of the treatment stages are not operational. Effluent discharge standards and bio-solids reuse requirements are not met, and the adopted treatment technologies are inappropriate for the investigated conditions. Sewer networks are supported by pumping stations and siphons that are only partially operational due to high operational costs and mechanical failures. Public sewerage is further plagued by urban informality and multiplicity of city spatial structures. Planned city core, and to a limited extent peri-urban areas, are served by public sewers, while sewer trunk lines pass through informal slum settlements without connections. In Chapter 4, satellite systems are analysed and configurations mapped. Satellite systems are intermediate semi-collective decentralised sewerage and treatment systems developed parallel to urban and onsite systems. They are provided by multiple actors, serve planned middle and high income residential, industrial complexes, endowed public and private universities, and government facilities. In terms of scale, they are community, neighbourhood and small-urban sanitation solutions. Besides, satellite systems are private sewerage systems that utilise gravity sewers and localised mechanised or non-mechanised treatment. The flows are based on land use or facility specific and are treated close to the point of generation. They are based on conventional designs and construction protocols without end-user involvement. Onsite systems in Kampala and Kisumu cities are examined in Chapter 5. Planning forecast indicates that onsite systems will dominate sewer (urban and satellite) systems beyond the next two decades. They are small-scale, highly decentralised and use simple technologies. Pit latrines dominate septic tanks in number, with eco-san on pilot scales and bio-latrine being a new sanitation option. Faecal sludge collection, treatment and safe disposal is dismal. The private sector dominates over local authorities in provision of faecal sludge services, but public sewerage agencies receive and co-treat faecal sludge with sewage although sewage works are not designed to receive faecal sludge. They are regulated by the Ministry of Health, enforced by the city councils and are provided by multiple actors solely or in partnership. Onsite sanitation can be a transient or permanent solution depending on mass flows and spatial requirements. However, for better sanitation provision, a permanent solution, with room for amendments to anticipate changes in space and mass flow is imperative. In Chapter 6, sustainability performance of sanitation systems are assessed following the defined three MM criteria. The performance shows that there is no sanitation system that is completely outcompeted in performance, neither are there systems with a very good performance. Sanitation system choices, consequently, are made among imperfect options, which call for balancing the various elements of sanitation provision to suit different policy and local contexts. Varying the assigned relative weight of the various criteria used in the overall MCA assessment indicates that generally, any slight increase in weight has an impact on systems that already have a high performance whereas in the case of systems with low performance the change is dismal or even negative. Therefore, programmes for improvement of sanitation systems might be directed to improvement options where systems already have a relatively high performance. However, those with a low performance may need comprehensive or even system reconfigurations for significant impacts to be realised. In conclusion, sanitation mixtures are theorised as the co-existence of different phases of modernity in tandem with local context variables. Thus, there is no one-fit-all paradigmatic way to sanitation provision if the local contexts are apparently different even within the same city. However, a shift of the centralised-decentralised dichotomy to modernised mixtures paradigm offers better impetus as it can utilise the advantages of both centralised and decentralised approaches without jeopardising existing provision pathways. The MM approach is helpful in assessing, mapping and describing sanitation systems in cities where sanitation mixtures are the norm rather than the exception. One way to modernise sanitation mixtures is by shifting the centralised-decentralised paradigm in order to modernise the mixed sanitation landscape. This is premised on the notion that such a shift will result in merging the strengths of centralised approach, e.g. economies of scale, efficiency, and convenience, with strengths of decentralised approach, e.g. accessibility, flexibility, participation, and reuse and recovery in development of intermediate systems configuration. This can be achieved through, among others, avoiding use of pumping stations, adoption of multiple service levels, involvement of private sector, servicing households at intermediate scale, and establishing sanitation suitability and management zones. The MM approach is also very helpful as a conceptual model for organising a research agenda which can be set along the four assessment dimensions of scale, management, flows and participation, as well as in searching for appropriate intervention measures along one or more of these dimensions. As an assessment and decision making tool, it is helpful in finding out which elements highlighted in the sustainability assessment need to be restructured and which need improvement in order to enhance their sustainability. However, translation of the proposed conceptual MM model into a mathematical model is a challenge yet to be explored. Considering its intrinsic dynamic character in dependence to varying spaces, flows, and scales along city development, a mathematical MM model would provide a regulatory design tool for city planners for adopting amendments to existing sanitation solutions. Obviously, up to date monitoring and inventory records are a pre-requisite for applying such a model, requiring institutional upgrading. Although the current results described in this thesis provide the basis for a more structured assessment and generalisation of sanitation mixtures, more research and contextualisation is needed in other regions, for further elaboration of MM model, and for the refinement of the assessment tool.

The central aim of the thesis is to contribute to a transition towards sustainable sanitation and wastewater systems and practices in Western society by developing a social science perspective on sanitation and wastewater management. The empirical core of this study comprises a comparative case study analysis of Dutch, German and Swedish pilot projects in which wastewater management technologies are experimented with in a domestic setting. Desk research, participatory observation and interviews with consumers and providers have been used to analyze these projects in detail