Wastewater - Turning Problem to Solution

Governance, institutional and regulatory barriers

In India, Breitenmoser et al. (2022) identified five barriers limiting progress in developing wastewater management and reuse, despite there being a clear political ambition: 1. Unclear responsibilities between central, state and local government bodies to implement schemes 2. Inadequate technological designs, which do not adequately consider long-term development plans of the areas, and which hamper treatment efficacy 3. Significant delays in project execution 4. Weak monitoring of compliance 5. Lack of adequate financing strategies for cost recovery of wastewater treatment services They identified the lack of an overarching and clearly defined policy or law at the central government level as a key limiting factor to overcoming these barriers, and made the following recommendations for the future governance of wastewater treatment and reuse in India: • Target-based regulations, defined national reuse standards for treated sewage and effective enforcement strategies need to be developed. • Policy and guiding frameworks need to establish detailed guidance on sewage treatment and reuse technologies (fit-for-purpose treatment). • Effective financing mechanisms (funds, taxes, tariffs) that permit sufficient cost recovery for long-term operation and maintenance of sewage treatment infrastructure should be established. • Institutional and monitoring capacity needs to be strengthened, and engagement and collaboration of key stakeholders tackled, to increase acceptance of waste recycled products.

Governance structures, including those relevant to wastewater management, resource recovery and reuse, are very context-specific and vary both between and within countries (Otoo and Drechsel 2018). Given the cross-sectoral nature of wastewater management and reuse, actors across sectors and governance levels should cooperate to develop and implement related policies and laws, despite their potential inexperience with working together or despite there being no established institutional mechanisms to facilitate this type of cooperation. This becomes increasingly complex where responsibilities are divided across national and subnational administrations. is often poor cooperation between competent organizations, or sectors potentially duplicating function and resulting in incoherent policies and legislation, and intersectoral conflict – all of which hinders progress (Qadir et al. 2020; Morris et al. 2021; Breitenmoser et al. 2022). There are associated challenges in lack of coordinated implementation actions, lack of monitoring and weak enforcement of regulations and standards. Morris et al. (2021) identified the importance of addressing policy and regulatory barriers. They demonstrated that many small companies can be incentivized to respond to legal requirements, but the absence of clear and coherent policies and legislation can prevent uptake of wastewater use. Where there are policies in place to promote resource recovery and reuse from wastewater streams, there

Insufficient data and information

management chain (figure 2.16) is essential for informing policy to protect the quality of water resources, track progress towards environmental and sustainability goals, and to better understand and unlock the potential for wastewater reuse. Additionally, gender-disaggregated data can also be collected to assess any positive or negative impacts to inform policies that mainstream gender as a development issue. The use of gender sensitive indicators can also reveal information to identify challenges experienced by people in assessing the extent of gender inequalities.

The current deficits of wastewater production, collection, treatment and reuse data availability and accessibility, as well as the lack of gender-disaggregated data, make it difficult to track progress in implementation of wastewater management and reuse. Before 2010, the availability and reliability of data were identified as major challenges to realizing the potential of wastewater for resource recovery and reuse. Access to data and information across all aspects of the wastewater

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