Investigating the Potential for Decentralized Institutions, Technologies, and Governance to Meet the Wastewater Challenge

日益严重的水资源短缺和污染迫使社区和决策者重新考虑他们对集中式污水处理系统的依赖，并尝试分散式污水处理系统。分散式项目是在城市排水沟、社区或机构环境中运行的小规模处理系统，不需要通过地下和地上管道远距离转移废水。但是，这些项目的规划和有效运作不仅需要技术上的全面变革，也需要体制框架和治理体系的全面变革，这就产生了一种尚未得到充分理解的跨尺度效应的联系。该奖项资助的研究将解决这一信息差距。人类学家Kelly D. Alley博士（奥本大学）和她的团队将研究机构结构、治理机制、废水流的地球物理景观和文化习俗之间的相互作用，在分散应对水污染和缺水的背景下。他们的项目还将产生处理、回收、水监测和环境监管方面的案例研究，可在社区和国家之间共享。这项研究将在印度进行，在污染严重的恒河流域，正在计划或正在进行广泛的分散式水再利用和减少污染的实验和试点项目。清理恒河是一件复杂的事情，一方面，这条河作为印度教女神具有重要的文化意义，另一方面，由于农业、工业、电力和城市化的不断升级，它正在减少。正是这些因素的结合，使得恒河相关项目的样本成为研究分散污水处理方法交叉效应的理想选择。跨项目比较将使研究人员能够确定使分散项目在制度上可行、经济上可行和文化上可接受的文化、制度和政治条件和限制。研究人员将把重点放在与144个排水口样本相关的项目上，这些排水口将废水排入河流系统。研究人员将通过实地考察和绘制污水排放和处理设施的地图来收集数据。他们将与行业和政府代表进行结构化访谈。他们将在有大量排水渠的社区进行调查，以评估对废水问题的文化和政治理解，以及实验和试点项目的可接受性。这项研究的结果将为任何地方计划采用分散式污水处理系统的决策者提供信息。研究结果还将有助于改进关于基础设施在社会和文化系统中的作用的社会科学理论。该研究资助了两名研究生，并加强了国际研究合作。

Increasing water shortages and contamination have pushed communities and policy makers to reconsider their reliance on centralized wastewater treatment systems and to experiment with decentralized ones. A decentralized project is a small-scale treatment system operated in a city drain, a neighborhood, or an institutional setting without long distance transfers of wastewater through underground and above-ground pipes. But the planning and effective operation of these projects require wholesale changes not only in technology but also in institutional frameworks and systems of governance, which produces a nexus of effects across scales that is not yet well understood. The research funded by this award will address this information gap. Anthropologist Dr. Kelly D. Alley (Auburn University) and her team will study the interactions between institutional structures, governance mechanisms, geophysical landscapes of wastewater flows, and cultural practices in the context of decentralized responses to water contamination and shortage. Their project will also produce case studies in treatment, recycling, water monitoring, and environmental regulation that can be shared across communities and countries. The research will be undertaken in India, where a wide range of decentralized water reuse and pollution reduction experiments and pilot programs are planned or underway in the heavily polluted Ganges river basin. Cleaning up the Ganges is complicated by the fact that the river is, on the one hand, culturally significant as a Hindu Goddess while, on the other, it is being diminished by escalating extractions for agriculture, industry, power, and urbanization. It is the combination of these factors that makes a sample of Ganges-related projects ideal for investigating the intersectional effects of decentralized wastewater treatment approaches. The cross-project comparison will allow the researchers to identify the cultural, institutional and political conditions and constraints that make decentralized projects institutionally feasible, financially viable, and culturally acceptable. The researchers will focus on projects connected to a sample of the 144 drains that pour wastewater into the river system. The researchers will collect data through site visits and mapping of wastewater drains and treatment facilities. They will carry out structured interviews with industry and government representatives. They will conduct surveys in neighborhoods with large drains to assess cultural and political understanding of wastewater problems and acceptability of experiments and pilot projects. Findings from the research will inform policy makers anywhere who plan to undertake decentralized wastewater treatment systems. Findings will also contribute to improved social science theory of the role of infrastructure in social and cultural systems. Funding the research supports two graduate students and enhances international research collaboration.