| Summary: | The dominant discourse on wastewater reuse is heavily depoliticised. This unconventional resource is
generally promoted as a 'no regret' solution to water scarcity. When political issues are broached, they take fairly
innocuous forms that appear quite easy to resolve in a consensual manner, such as the need to overcome the
'barriers' of social acceptance and intersectoral collaboration. In this paper, we challenge what we see as superficial
approaches to the politics of wastewater reuse. We do so by discussing the cases of treated wastewater reuse for
irrigation (TWWRI) in Zaouiet Sousse (Tunisia) and Tiznit (Morocco). We argue that in both cases, TWWRI has been
plagued by unresolved tensions that are deeply rooted in the specific political economy of how this resource is
produced. We particularly highlight three structural political-economic contradictions. These are: 1) the
contradictions between the state’s preference for the largest possible schemes and the lack of interest of (many)
peri-urban farmers who would rather urbanise their land and/or practise low-intensity farming alongside other
occupations; 2) the tension between high operational costs and the poor smallholders who are typically targeted;
and 3) the contradiction between the pockets of stringent state monitoring thus created and the surrounding sea
of laisser-faire. We show how these contradictions play out somewhat differently in Morocco and Tunisia due to a
more robust structuring of the water users association in Tiznit than in Zaouiet Sousse. We also show that these
material contradictions are associated with different conceptions of the meaning and worth of TWWRI projects,
which argues in favour of a cultural political economy of wastewater reuse. In conclusion, we argue for re-politicising
and democratizing TWWRI more decisively instead of striving to depoliticise it.
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