Water supply continuity and quality are significant policy challenges in developing countries, exposing shortcomings in resourcing, infrastructure, and governance capacity. At the same time, water policy often remains embedded in a command-and-control paradigm that relies on perpetual technological innovation and infrastructure investment to offset increasingly unsustainable demand patterns and management inefficiencies. This article explores the opportunities and challenges of integrating a circular-based perspective at the urban scale to overcome exploitive and inefficient patterns of water management, focusing on Southeast Asia. Emerging from the realm of industrial production, the circular economy emphasizes waste reduction and reuse. The circular water economy can be used a means for addressing supply scarcity. While a physical circular water economy would still primarily be local or national in scale, we posit that policy coordination, knowledge exchange, and institutional learning across Southeast Asia urban areas can complement localized circular water practices by generating a community of practice. The article concludes with six practical pathways to realizing this ambition.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652626015945

Tortajada, Cecilia; Hartley, Kris; Biswas, Asit; Kirchherr, Julian. (2026). Towards a circular water economy in Southeast Asian cities. Journal of Cleaner Production, 574, 149053.