Wetlands for water justice: a political ecology of water quality and more-than-human habitability in three constructed wetland projects

Abstract

This thesis investigates three more-than-human waterscapes in rural India and Scotland where constructed wetlands have been built for wastewater treatment. My analysis of these constructed wetland projects draws from political ecology, more-than-human geography and critical water scholarship. I demonstrate how close attention to more-than-human relations can both strengthen and stretch the existing normative concerns of critical water scholarship. I first explore how varied notions of justice can be found in the socio-technical imaginaries of constructed wetlands. The next section traces how water quality is judged and how water quality changes are interpreted in the focal waterscapes. Both technical and everyday ways of judging adequate water quality rely on the combination of more-than-human relations and broader knowledge formations. Interpretations of water quality changes draw upon different models of hydraulic, ecological and social processes. I argue that, in judging adequate water quality and interpreting water quality changes, an oversimplified understanding of more-than-human actions stabilises expert knowledge and sustains relations of domination in waterscapes. The final section contributes to an emerging literature examining the overlapping of infrastructures and multispecies habitats. Through bridging geographical and ecological theorisations of biodiversity, I uncover the relations, scalar connections and representations that allow varied life to flourish in constructed wetlands. I also demonstrate how spatial exclusions serve to redistribute the vulnerabilities of waterscape co-existence. My research methodology makes an empirical contribution to discussions about the role of natural science methods in critical environmental scholarship. Through analyses of the knowledge politics and material transformations of these constructed wetland projects, this thesis advances the concepts and practices that might support more-than-human flourishing in waterscapes.