{"title":"8Rs for circular water and sanitation systems: Leveraging circular economy thinking for safe, resilient and inclusive services","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.envdev.2024.101093","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To achieve their normative health, environmental and social objectives, water and sanitation services must be safely managed, inclusive and climate resilient. Meeting these imperatives presents a need and opportunity for innovative thinking about water and sanitation service systems. Circular economy concepts are being applied across a multitude of product and service sectors with the aim to facilitate regenerative flows of resources. Given the dependence on water resources, associated climate risks, and the generation of reusable waste products in water and sanitation service delivery, circular economy concepts can be usefully leveraged to drive sustainability outcomes. This article contributes a heuristic in the form of a conceptual framework for applying circular economy concepts in the design and delivery of water and sanitation services in diverse Global South contexts. The framework seeks to drive multiple outcomes relevant to water and sanitation initiatives: safely managed services, social inclusion, and climate resilience. Co-developed by an international research team applying a theoretical multiplicity approach and collaborative sensemaking, the heuristic takes the form of a suite of eight adapted circular economy ‘R strategies’ for water and sanitation. The R strategies were selected and articulated to reflect theory-based principles of circular economy, climate resilience and inclusion. They are intended to prompt thinking and action in pursuit of safely managed, climate resilient, inclusive water and sanitation services that align with the broader sustainability directions that circular economy narratives aspire to. The heuristic offers a conceptually rigorous, practical tool that can support collaborative, deliberative processes to realise the potential benefits of circularity in water and sanitation service systems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54269,"journal":{"name":"Environmental Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Environmental Development","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211464524001313","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
To achieve their normative health, environmental and social objectives, water and sanitation services must be safely managed, inclusive and climate resilient. Meeting these imperatives presents a need and opportunity for innovative thinking about water and sanitation service systems. Circular economy concepts are being applied across a multitude of product and service sectors with the aim to facilitate regenerative flows of resources. Given the dependence on water resources, associated climate risks, and the generation of reusable waste products in water and sanitation service delivery, circular economy concepts can be usefully leveraged to drive sustainability outcomes. This article contributes a heuristic in the form of a conceptual framework for applying circular economy concepts in the design and delivery of water and sanitation services in diverse Global South contexts. The framework seeks to drive multiple outcomes relevant to water and sanitation initiatives: safely managed services, social inclusion, and climate resilience. Co-developed by an international research team applying a theoretical multiplicity approach and collaborative sensemaking, the heuristic takes the form of a suite of eight adapted circular economy ‘R strategies’ for water and sanitation. The R strategies were selected and articulated to reflect theory-based principles of circular economy, climate resilience and inclusion. They are intended to prompt thinking and action in pursuit of safely managed, climate resilient, inclusive water and sanitation services that align with the broader sustainability directions that circular economy narratives aspire to. The heuristic offers a conceptually rigorous, practical tool that can support collaborative, deliberative processes to realise the potential benefits of circularity in water and sanitation service systems.
期刊介绍:
Environmental Development provides a future oriented, pro-active, authoritative source of information and learning for researchers, postgraduate students, policymakers, and managers, and bridges the gap between fundamental research and the application in management and policy practices. It stimulates the exchange and coupling of traditional scientific knowledge on the environment, with the experiential knowledge among decision makers and other stakeholders and also connects natural sciences and social and behavioral sciences. Environmental Development includes and promotes scientific work from the non-western world, and also strengthens the collaboration between the developed and developing world. Further it links environmental research to broader issues of economic and social-cultural developments, and is intended to shorten the delays between research and publication, while ensuring thorough peer review. Environmental Development also creates a forum for transnational communication, discussion and global action.
Environmental Development is open to a broad range of disciplines and authors. The journal welcomes, in particular, contributions from a younger generation of researchers, and papers expanding the frontiers of environmental sciences, pointing at new directions and innovative answers.
All submissions to Environmental Development are reviewed using the general criteria of quality, originality, precision, importance of topic and insights, clarity of exposition, which are in keeping with the journal''s aims and scope.