Troubled wastewaters: the politics of transitions to a circular economy

Humanity faces major challenges because the boundaries of an ecologically safe and socially just space are transgressed.<br/>This thesis’ point of departure is that these societal challenges result from longterm, complex, unsustainable consumption and production patterns in sociotechnical systems such as energy, mobility, agriculture and water....

Incumbents' enabling role in niche-innovation: Power dynamics in a wastewater project

More pluralised understandings of incumbencies are often overlooked in transitions research, which may lead to underestimating the enabling roles of incumbents in niche projects. This study explores these roles by applying a power framework to five struggles revolving around a path-breaking decentralised wastewater treatment project in the...

Power struggles in policy feedback processes: incremental steps towards a circular economy within Dutch wastewater policy

Environmental problems are usually not tackled with path-departing policies but rather with incrementally adjusted or unchanged policies. One way to address incremental change is the policy feedback approach, which initially focussed on self-reinforcing feedback and path-dependency. Today, self-undermining feedback is also increasingly being...

A transition in the Dutch wastewater system? The struggle between discourses and with lock-ins

Recently, calls have increased for a paradigm shift or transition towards resource recovery and a circular economy in the Dutch wastewater system. However, we have observed diverging interpretations on the nature of the transition. This reflects the political environment of sustainability transitions: political struggle emerges over the...