title: Accelerating Transformation Towards Water Sustainability in the Global South
Creators: name: Saraswat, Chitresh
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2025

description: This PhD thesis addresses the slow progress in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6, and the critical challenges of accelerating transformation toward water sustainability in the Global South. Amidst the dual pressures of climate change and urbanization, the thesis explores urban water regime complexities that hinder the pathway toward fundamental large-scale radical changes under diverse governance configurations. The research focused on Bengaluru and Nagpur water regimes in India, operating under public and public-private partnership governance configurations, providing in-depth cross-comparative analysis of the mechanisms responsible for purposefully accelerating transformations toward water sustainability. Employing qualitative research methodology, the thesis begins by examining the operational complexities of the socio-technical system of urban water regimes in the Global South. Next, it explores the role of innovation and transformative/change agents in the emergence of transformative initiatives and how the 'window of opportunity' for acceleration is created. A significant contribution of this thesis is the development of a novel framework that introduces and articulates sub-phases and mechanisms for acceleration. The analytical framework offers a structured approach to understanding the dynamics of mechanisms and provides empirical evidence of their interplay, which reinforces acceleration. This research evaluates the conduciveness of diverse governance configurations in deliberately accelerating transformative initiatives. The results underscore the necessary role of innovation activities and interactions with politics in driving systemic changes. They highlight how continuous funding, supportive regulatory policies, and strong local leadership manage the barriers to accelerate water sustainability through an analysis of the water innovation ecosystem. The research discusses the archetypes of change agents in navigating the complexities and developing transformative initiatives through collective actions. The thesis introduced three sub-phases of the acceleration process: enabling conditions (sustainable visioning, learning, scaling up, collaboration, and partnering); behavioural and societal changes (instrumentalization and scaling deep); and robust and sustainable systems (embedding and monitoring). All are critical for navigating the transformation pathways and expediting the pace of systemic change. Analysis of transformative initiatives in navigating pathways and utilizing the mechanisms revealed the significance of deliberation and operationalization capacity, localization, and inclusiveness for the first, second, and third sub-phases of the acceleration phase. By aligning interventions with the specific needs of each sub-phase, the thesis contributes to a holistic understanding of factors that enable the acceleration of transformative initiatives. The research also highlighted the dynamics of mechanisms, showing that their interactions can reinforce or weaken the acceleration process. Importantly, the cross-comparative analysis of the conduciveness of configurations remains inconclusive. The regime operating under a public-private partnership governance configuration is not necessarily more conducive than the regime under a public governance configuration in accelerating transformation toward water sustainability in urban water regimes in the Global South. The thesis provides strategic insights for policymakers and stakeholders, offering eight principles of governance configurations that may create a conducive environment for purposefully accelerating transformations toward water sustainability. The research contributes to advancing discourse on temporal and spatial aspects of socio-technical systems and outlines a pathway for accelerated and equitable transformation in urban water regimes in the Global South.