A socio-natural standpoint to understand coproduction of water, energy and waste services

Abstract

This introductory article of the special issue on ‘Geographies of water, energy and waste service coproduction’ explores the implications of coproducing these services in terms of both accessibility and environmental sustainability. According to a socio-natural standpoint, provision extent and resources metabolized by the services are equally regarded employing a threefold conceptual framework integrating actor/flow and area fields. A rich variety of service coproduction geographies in terms of actors involved, resources mobilized and urban spaces covered emerges. More importantly, coproduction of water, energy and waste services proves to leverage on both service accessibility and environmental sustainability of the related resources.

Keywords:

• service coproduction
• accessibility
• sustainability
• conventional services

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Erik Swyngedouw makes this distinction clear while referring to the work of Graham and Marvin (2001) about Splintering Urbanism. To support their thesis, Graham and Marvin refer to information and communication technologies as ‘cyberspace divides’.

2. Decentralized systems for supplying energy and disposing of rainwater and wastewater, for example, are not a novelty. Traditional, grassroots socio-technological systems are often off-grid (see, for example, Jaglin 2012; Allen et al. 2016). However, since recently, ‘the liberalization of network industries, growing concerns for the use of environmental resources and impacts on these resources, new financial arrangements and the increasing individualization of lifestyles are all challenging the supremacy of centralized solutions and promoting the development of alternative technological systems at a more local scale’ (Coutard, Ruthgerford, and Florentin 2014, 91).

3. Just to cite some significant examples of how service co-production in the Global South is addressed in literature: Ostrom (1996), Batley (2006), Bovaird (2007), Mitlin (2008), Peters and Muraleedharan (2008), Allen (2010, 2012), Batley and Mcloughlin (2010), Moretto (2010), Booth (2011), McDonald and Ruiters (2012), Albrechts (2013), McGranahan (2013), McMillan, Spronk, and Caswell (2014).

4. Materials is intended here in a wider sense comprising, according to political ecology, both nature and second nature (Smith 1984).

5. For example, in the case of waste delivery, the observation extends to the nature of waste products that the urban service collects and, in turn, discharges. In the service scheme, the waste product collected and the waste product discharged by the service may or not coincide, as the material collected could be further processed/transformed before its final discharge.

6. In the first case, the focus is on the organizational and technical aspects of public service co-production (very often non territorialized nor conventionally networked services) and, partially, on the institutional systems and normative frameworks favouring this service model (see for example Bovaird and Loeffler 2012; Jakobsen 2013; Verschuere, Brandsen and Petsoff 2012; Osborne and Strokosch 2013).The spatial dimension is almost totally absent. In the case of service coproduction in the Global South, the few existing pieces of research seem to present a much narrower and selective approach (see for example Mitlin 2008; Peters and Muraleedharan 2008; McGranahan 2013; Allen 2012; McMillan, Spronk, and Caswell 2014).The socio-spatial dimension is not systematically included in the analysis of their governance architecture or their effectiveness in producing structural service improvements.

7. This analysis of the circulatory processes concerning the flow channelled by the coproduced service is in line with the observation proposed by Girardet (1992) in The Gaia Atlas of Cities.

8. However, Button (2016) stresses also that the rainwater collection performed in Mumbai is controversial since the water retained is used for watering the gardens, while the water made infiltrating to recharge groundwater contributes to the operating conditions needed by the water bottling plant.

9. The basic technical services are tangible expression of the relation between a society and a certain space. In Raffestin (1980), space and territory are not synonymous but space becomes territory when concerned with the practices of the actors. Sacks (1986, 19) defines human territoriality as ‘spatial strategy to affect, influence, or control resources and people, by controlling area’.

Additional information

Funding

Part of this work was supported by the Institut Bruxellois pour la Recherche Scientifique under the grant Prospective Research for Brussels [2012].