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As a conclusion, this chapter synthesizes common findings regarding what enables or constrains adaptation, including issues associated with specificsectors or geographies, scale, and extent of adaptation policy implementation (what has enabledadaptation to progress beyond policy formulation to implementation). The chapter also considers the challenges arising from continued use of a linear model for decision-making that focuses on addressing perceived knowledge deficits associated with climate change, but neglects other barriers arising from social, cultural, institutional and political system factors. Furthermore, the chapter argues for the need for broader integration of various perspectives from social and, in particular, policy studies to comprehend adaptation (and mitigation) policy challenges.

This chapter argues that the development of large-scale seawater desalination over the last two decades has been intimately linked to the privatisation, commercialisation and commodification of water services in general, and urban water in particular. It contends that a desalination “plant” should be more accurately understood as a desalination “factory”, which creates a manufactured product (potable water) in a pre-arranged quantity and with a pre-specified quality. The chapter provides a detailed analysis of the convoluted development of desalination as a decentralised and local water supply for San Diego, California. It focuses on two plants on the North American Pacific coast: the 189 ML/day Carlsbad Desalination Plant in San Diego County, which opened in 2015; and a larger facility currently under construction south of the US-Mexico border at Rosarito Beach, Baja California, which is heralded as the first ever “binational” seawater desalination project. My core contention here is that desalination is emerging as an important technology in political and ideological shift towards the neoliberalisation of municipal water supply.