Water Sustainability at the Interplay of Technology, Regulation, and Human Rights

Traditional regulation-driven and cost-benefit analysis based approach for water infrastructures establishment and treatment technology implementation can no longer ensure long-term water sustainability and human prosperity. Sustainable development requires the management of the throughput of all materials including water and energy to be within the biosphere’s capacity for regeneration and waste assimilation. The concept of urban metabolism has become one of the most powerful paradigms and interdisciplinary concepts for the empirical analysis of the society-nature interaction. Here, we will discuss our efforts to develop and test the viability of a city model of water/wastewater infrastructure that will retain the usefulness of indicator systems while capturing dynamic interactions and relationships among key variables in ways that will be helpful to wise decision-making about water technology and water management. We will focus on evaluating two main scenarios: completed centralized water and wastewater infrastructure versus decentralized treatment, more energy-intensive advanced treatment versus low-eco-footprint technologies. We will assess how the alternative strategies regarding the water system infrastructure and wastewater treatment technologies levels potentially impact the identified urban sustainability indicators. More advanced wastewater treatment technologies and levels have been pushed to meet progressively stringent effluent discharges permits, but at expenses of exponentially increasing ecological footprint with more energy and material input. In addition, water/wastewater infrastructure, locations will impact the potential for water reuse and nutrient recycle, as well as people’s rights of equal access to high quality water. The better understanding of the urban water system and internal dynamics allows the derivation of a set of conditions and principles for urban water sustainability, promoting sustainable production and consumption patterns, more informed decision-making concerning material use, waste production and pollution prevention and, in term, moving towards a circular metabolism or ‘closed loop’ system.