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Against the trend prevalent during the 1990s and 2000s, large-scale infrastructural projects have made a comeback in the water sector. Although sometimes framed as part of a broader sustainable transition, the return of big infrastructure is a much more complicated story in which finance has played a crucial role. In the following article, we explore this encounter between finance and water infrastructure using the case of Britain's first experiment in desalination technologies, the Thames Water Desalination Plant (TWDP). On the surface, the plant appears to be a classic example of the successes of normative industrial ecology, in which sustainability challenges have been met with forward-thinking green innovations. However, the TWDP is utterly dependent on a byzantine financial model, which has shaped Thames Water's investment strategy over the last decade. This article returns to the fundamental question of whether London ever needed a desalination plant in the first place. Deploying an urban political ecology approach, we demonstrate how the plant is simultaneously an iconic illustration of ecological modernization and a fragile example of an infrastructure-heavy solution to the demands of financialization. Understanding the development of the TWDP requires a focus on the scalar interactions between flows of finance, waste, energy and water that are woven through the hydrosocial cycle of London.

AbstractAgainst the trend prevalent during the 1990s and 2000s, large‐scale infrastructural projects have made a comeback in the water sector. Although sometimes framed as part of a broader sustainable transition, the return of big infrastructure is a much more complicated story in which finance has played a crucial role. In the following article, we explore this encounter between finance and water infrastructure using the case of Britain's first experiment in desalination technologies, the Thames Water Desalination Plant (TWDP). On the surface, the plant appears to be a classic example of the successes of normative industrial ecology, in which sustainability challenges have been met with forward‐thinking green innovations. However, the TWDP is utterly dependent on a byzantine financial model, which has shaped Thames Water's investment strategy over the last decade. This article returns to the fundamental question of whether London ever needed a desalination plant in the first place. Deploying an urban political ecology approach, we demonstrate how the plant is simultaneously an iconic illustration of ecological modernization and a fragile example of an infrastructure‐heavy solution to the demands of financialization. Understanding the development of the TWDP requires a focus on the scalar interactions between flows of finance, waste, energy and water that are woven through the hydrosocial cycle of London.

Changes recently occurred in contemporary societies are transforming the forms of citizens' participation in the public sphere, challenging institutional participation initiatives promoted by various governments over the past decade. It is quite necessary to evaluate these initiatives to ensure its functionality in this new scenario. In this context, this article proposes different criteria and participation assessment instruments in order to apply them into a concrete experience: the participatory process on forest management carried out in Muntanya de Sant Miquel in Setcases (Cataluña). At the same time, the article reflects on what are the best ways and conditions to promote effective participation, focusing its attention on the debate on the 'temperature' of deliberation. We conclude that it is extremely difficult to combine hot and cold deliberation. However, this may be the best solution when the participatory topic addresses high conflict of interests between stakeholders and, at the same time, requires to be addressed from the logic of collective interest because it affects the whole community. ; Los cambios experimentados recientemente en las sociedades contemporáneas están transformando las formas de participación de la ciudadanía en la esfera pública, poniendo en tela de juicio las iniciativas de participación institucional promovidas por diversas administraciones durante la última década. Resulta del todo necesario evaluar estas iniciativas si se quiere garantizar su funcionalidad en este nuevo escenario. En este contexto, el presente artículo propone distintos criterios e instrumentos de evaluación de la participación y los aplica a una experiencia concreta: el proceso participativo sobre la gestión forestal en la Muntanya de Sant Miquel, en Setcases (Cataluña). Al mismo tiempo, el artículo se pregunta sobre cuáles son las mejores formas y condiciones para promover una participación efectiva, incidiendo en el debate sobre la "temperatura" de la deliberación. Concluimos que es extremadamente difícil combinar las lógicas de deliberación fría y caliente. Sin embargo, esta puede ser la solución más adecuada cuando el tema a abordar despierte un alto conflicto de intereses entre actores organizados y, al mismo tiempo, requiera ser abordado desde la lógica del interés colectivo porque afecta al conjunto de una comunidad.

Over the last four decades the locus of economic power has shifted from industry to finance. As part of this trend, the 'financialisation' of the water sector has added a new layer of complexity to the hydrosocial cycle, witnessed in the emergence of new financial actors, logics and financing instruments. Such a shift has profoundly reshaped the relationship between water utilities and consumers in the South East of England, where the household has become, in the words of Allen and Pryke (2013), a human revenue stream for financialised utilities. In this paper, we make an argument that the water meter is one of the crucial mediators through which finance will touch the lives of individual subjects. In the South East of England, after initial opposition to universal metering - in part shaped by fears over fluctuating revenues - water companies are now embedding a metering programme within a billing and tariff structure that aims to ensure governable and predictable subjects. Drawing on Urban Political Ecology, we argue that the financialisation of the water sector in England shapes the emergence of new financial subjectivities while enabling new forms of political rule that operate at a range of spatial scales.

In this paper we explore the new orientation taken by Spanish water policy since the beginning of the 21st century and very specifically the shift towards desalination as an alternative to other water supply options such as river regulation or inter-basin water transfers. Desalination has been seen as the cure for everything that dams and inter-basin water transfers were unable to solve, including droughts, scarcities, social conflicts, environmental impacts, and political rivalries among the different Spanish regions. Desalination also means a new and powerful element in water planning and management that could provide water for the continuous expansion of the urban and tourist growth machine in Mediterranean Spain and thus relax possible water constraints on this growth. However, by 2012 most new desalination plants along the Mediterranean coast remained almost idle. Focusing on the case of the Mancomunidad de Canales del Taibillla in South-eastern Spain, our aim is to develop a critical, integrated and reflexive perspective on the use of desalination as a source of water for urban and regional growth. ; Part of this research was funded by the Spanish CICYT under grant numbers CSO2012-36997-C02-01, CSO2012-36997-C02-02 and JCI-2011-10709.

Los cambios experimentados recientemente en las sociedades contemporáneas están transformando las formas de participación de la ciudadanía en la esfera pública, poniendo en tela de juicio las iniciativas de participación institucional promovidas por diversas administraciones durante la última década. Resulta del todo necesario evaluar estas iniciativas si se quiere garantizar su funcionalidad en este nuevo escenario. En este contexto, el presente artículo propone distintos criterios e instrumentos de evaluación de la participación y los aplica a una experiencia concreta: el proceso participativo sobre la gestión forestal en la Muntanya de Sant Miquel, en Setcases (Cataluña). Al mismo tiempo, el artículo se pregunta sobre cuáles son las mejores formas y condiciones para promover una participación efectiva, incidiendo en el debate sobre la "temperatura" de la deliberación. Concluimos que es extre-madamente difícil combinar las lógicas de deliberación fría y caliente. Sin embargo, esta puede ser la solución más adecuada cuando el tema a abordar despierte un alto conflicto de intereses entre actores organizados y, al mismo tiempo, requiera ser abordado desde la lógica del interés colectivo porque afecta al conjunto de una comunidad. ; Changes recently occurred in contemporary societies are transforming the forms of citizens' partici-pation in the public sphere, challenging institutional participation initiatives promoted by various governments over the past decade. It is quite necessary to evaluate these initiatives to ensure its functionality in this new scenario. In this context, this article proposes different criteria and partici-pation assessment instruments in order to apply them into a concrete experience: the participatory process on forest management carried out in Muntanya de Sant Miquel in Setcases (Cataluña). At the same time, the article reflects on what are the best ways and conditions to promote effective par-ticipation, focusing its attention on the debate on the 'temperature' of deliberation. We conclude that it is extremely difficult to combine hot and cold deliberation. However, this may be the best solution when the participatory topic addresses high conflict of interests between stakeholders and, at the same time, requires to be addressed from the logic of collective interest because it affects the whole com-munity.