Wastewater treatment – Tackling a wicked problem through dialogue and action research

Abstract

Pollution from South Africa’s WWTW has been a national priority concern for some years now. Dysfunctional WWTW threaten the provision of drinking water, the safety of people living downstream from WWTW and using water directly, as well as the health of aquatic ecosystems. To date, most interventions have focused on training and capacity building, emergency interventions and inspections. They have not addressed the political questions that constitute the dynamic of dysfunctional works. In 2015, a Water Research Commission (WRC) project tackled this problem with a combination of political ecology, action research, social learning and complexity approaches (see box on political ecology).

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