Policy Integration for Enabling Environments: Decentralised Water Technologies for Rural Water Reuse

ABSTRACT Water reuse holds significant promise for addressing global water challenges, yet wide scale implementation remains limited. Decentralised water technologies for reuse have been highlighted as a potential aide in the reduction of water challenges, specifically for environments that have typically been considered ‘water rich’, and in rural areas that are currently outside the reach of large‐scale centralised networks. Yet for many, a number of challenges remain, with the current policy landscape remaining unsupportive for the creation of an enabling environment. Policy integration is used as a theoretical and analytical framework to explore how enabling environments for decentralised water reuse are, or are not, created in rural and island Scotland. The analysis examines how cross‐sectoral coordination across water, planning, rural development and climate policy shapes the potential for water reuse initiatives, highlighting both institutional fragmentation and emerging opportunities. Through this lens, key policy drivers, gaps and tensions are identified, and alternative pathways for more coherent support of decentralised technologies and systems are traced. Recommendations to strengthen integration mechanisms, reduce governance fragmentation and better align rural water, climate and land‐use agendas are provided.