Tapping into the Future: Transforming Hydrosocial Cycles of the Llobregat and Besòs Rivers in the Face of Climate Emergency (HYDROSOCIAL)

PIs: Natàlia Cantó-Milà and Marc Hug 

Reference: Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities. PID2023-147380NB-I00. 

HYDROSOCIAL investigates how hydrosocial cycles are being transformed in the Llobregat and Besòs rivers under conditions of climate emergency, with particular attention to the shift towards indirect potable reuse and the broader reconfiguration of infrastructures, rules, uses, and water-related imaginaries in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. The project treats both rivers as key socio-ecological laboratories for understanding how technological responses and resilience promises – regeneration, purification, large-scale reuse, and blue-green infrastructures – reorder the role of urban rivers, reshape governance scales, and reconfigure relationships between public and private actors. HYDROSOCIAL pursues a dual aim – to develop a comprehensive political ecology account of how indirect potable reuse reshapes the meaning and significance of urban rivers – and to advance hydrosocial cycle scholarship by integrating socio-technical imaginaries, future imaginaries, and futures-in-the-making into geographical, political ecology, and sociological debates. Methodologically, it combines a historical-sociological reconstruction of narratives and modernisation waves, an analysis of evolving political-economic configurations and actor perceptions, and an examination of unintended socio-economic consequences for vulnerable groups – including changing costs and risks, emerging conflicts, and how these tensions reshape imaginaries of reuse. It also addresses uncertainty around health-related issues and the scientific, political, and ethical debates that such uncertainty generates. The project aims to deliver a transferable conceptual and empirical framework relevant to other Mediterranean urban regions facing comparable water-supply fragilities.