The circular economy framework has become a popular paradigm framing interventions in the water sector. The promise is to sustain economic growth while decreasing the water footprint of societies. This paper goes beyond the discursive association between the circular economy and the water cycle that dominates the literature. It unpacks the contradictions that exist when confronting the 'neat' principles of the circular economy to the 'unruliness' of water flows and practices. We call for the adoption of a grounded approach to assess the scope for the circular economy framework to support sustainable and just water management.
The Teesta River dispute, a protracted transboundary water conflict between India and Bangladesh, profoundly affects downstream communities. This study examines their lived experiences through an environmental justice lens, drawing on fieldwork across four districts and thematic analysis. Findings identify four interconnected dimensions of injustice: distributive, procedural, interactional and intergenerational. Communities report unequal water access, exclusion from decision-making, disrespectful treatment, livelihood losses and erosion of river-based cultural practices. They associate these experiences with upstream water control, governance failures and the stalled 2011 water-sharing agreement. The study argues that resolving the Teesta crisis requires justice-oriented governance that meaningfully places affected communities at the centre.
Ecosystem degradation demands effective conservation, with river restoration offering a promising means to reinstate natural processes. The European Water Framework Directive seeks to improve ecological water quality, yet national implementation remains challenging. This study applies the policy arrangements approach (PAA) consisting of the four dimensions of actors, resources, institutions and discourses to analyse the policy implementation arrangement (PIA) of river restoration projects in the Dutch and German parts of the shared Vecht-Dinkel sub-catchment. This comparative case study is based on document analysis, semi-structured interviews and two expert workshops and shows how the (mis)alignment of the dimensions of PIAs affects project implementation.
