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Project properties |
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| Title | What drives circular water management and policy change? Bringing together Global North and South perspectives. |
| Group | Public Administration and Policy |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 36 |
| Supervisor(s) | Kirsty Holstead |
| Examiner(s) | Kirsty Holstead |
| Contact info | kirsty.holstead@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2024/05/07 |
| End date | 2024/12/31 |
| Description | This Masters project is an opportunity to study the issue of water circularity and reuse in your own country or country of choice.
The Netherlands is facing challenges related to freshwater provision, which will develop in the future. We need to rethink how we use freshwater and introduce more circular water management, i.e. water systems that are organised to reduce water consumption, reuse water, and extract and recycle waste products. Debate exists around how to encourage circular water management. One part of the story of changing water management is policy and law, which, in the Netherlands, are still in development and arguably far from creating momentum for making circular water management more widely practised. However, looking further afield, water reuse is already practised and even taken for granted in various arid countries, such as the US, Singapore, and parts of Europe. California, for example, is an often-cited example of a strong water reuse policy. Still, it was at some point in the early stages of water reuse development, maybe similar to the Netherlands. It could be argued that if some of these countries were where the Netherlands was on a journey towards circular water management, maybe the Netherlands could learn from their experiences. Using concepts and theories from policy change, governance, and public administration, this project asks what can be learnt from the paths taken by other countries towards circular water management. Focusing on policy change, the project examines other countries' contexts to examine water reuse and circular water management and how their priorities have evolved over time. |
| Used skills | The overall ambition of the projects is to understand how to enable change in water systems in the Netherlands, encouraging and enhancing the protection of freshwater provision now and in the future.
To do so, this master's project will focus on the policy process in country contexts where water reuse is common to understand what changed and how any key moments or windows of opportunity arose and were responded to by policy actors. The precise focus of the project and country focus will depend on the student and their interests. In terms of methods, these are again open to the student's shaping. Possibilities may include examining policy documents and interviewing those who have shaped policy over time. The student will determine and arrange these. The plan of work includes activities including: - Identify country of interest - Examine policy process and actors - Understand policy change theories and concepts - Gather data - Analyse data with, for example, Atlas.ti or Nvivo - Consider what this tells us about circular water management in the Netherlands This 36 ETCS project is suited to students with experience and/or interest in qualitative research and learning about how policies and water priorities change over time. Language skill requirements will depend on the country of interest. |
| Requirements | Policy change for water reuse: What can we learn from countries further down the road of circular water management? |