This thesis investigates three more-than-human waterscapes in rural India and Scotland where
constructed wetlands have been built for wastewater treatment. My analysis of these constructed
wetland projects draws from political ecology, more-than-human geography and critical water
scholarship. I demonstrate how close attention to more-than-human relations can both strengthen
and stretch the existing normative concerns of critical water scholarship.
I first explore how varied notions of justice can be found in the socio-technical imaginaries of
constructed wetlands. The next section traces how water quality is judged and how water quality
changes are interpreted in the focal waterscapes. Both technical and everyday ways of judging
adequate water quality rely on the combination of more-than-human relations and broader
knowledge formations. Interpretations of water quality changes draw upon different models of
hydraulic, ecological and social processes. I argue that, in judging adequate water quality and
interpreting water quality changes, an oversimplified understanding of more-than-human actions
stabilises expert knowledge and sustains relations of domination in waterscapes. The final section
contributes to an emerging literature examining the overlapping of infrastructures and multispecies
habitats. Through bridging geographical and ecological theorisations of biodiversity, I uncover the
relations, scalar connections and representations that allow varied life to flourish in constructed
wetlands. I also demonstrate how spatial exclusions serve to redistribute the vulnerabilities of
waterscape co-existence.
My research methodology makes an empirical contribution to discussions about the role of natural
science methods in critical environmental scholarship. Through analyses of the knowledge politics
and material transformations of these constructed wetland projects, this thesis advances the
concepts and practices that might support more-than-human flourishing in waterscapes
