ADVANCING SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH LIVING LABS: A CASE OF THE WATER HUB, SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

Living laboratories are sites or arenas that have the potential to advance sustainability transitions by finding ways to strengthen the capacity of actors and agencies in responding to critical social and environmental challenges. South Africa faces significant challenges in public service delivery, which are obstacles to addressing crucial issues of poverty, social inequality, and environmental justice. The study describes the role of academia and other actors in advancing research and innovation in the Food-Energy-Water-Waste nexus. The Water Hub began as a small, abandoned municipal waste water treatment work and was repurposed in 2017 as a research and innovation centre. Academics involved in managing the site were strategically positioned to guide the development of the Water Hub to transform thinking and practice to contribute to a more just, equitable and sustainable world. Since then, the Water Hub has aimed to create an enabling environment by deliberately encouraging the collaboration of multi-stakeholder groups to find sustainable solutions. Progress in becoming a living lab has been slow and uncertain partly because advancement has depended on research-led projects and a willingness of academics to champion the overall project and site management. The Water Hub site has demonstrated innovative and creative ways of treating polluted water, including recovering and reusing resources. The ongoing challenge resides in facilitating community-based collaboration to address the causal factors of those issues that can be addressed through sustainability transition theory-and-practice pathways explored in the paper.