ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, wastewater has emerged to present two principal challenges for public and private managers of water supply and sanitation systems, particularly under conditions of rapid urban growth and water scarcity (Scott et al. 2004, Drechsel et al. 2010). First, wastewater as the subject of management has evolved from hazard to resource in the perspectives of municipalities, farmers, and environmental advocates. Second, the use of wastewater is increasingly changing from haphazard to regulated. This paper reviews these challenges, and considers a third that is of particular relevance to the present special issue of Water International: Wastewater is subject to infrastructural operations and commercialization, leading to a subtle shift in control and regulation from private to public interests, but with use practices that paradoxically are the reverse, that is wastewater use that was once public is increasingly privatized. These processes, in various combinations, occur worldwide in myriad forms and for diverse reasons; together they constitute what this paper calls the global commodification of wastewater.
