After a massive hurricane devastated Belize's south coast in 2001, “sustainable tourism” was the national government's answer to spurring economic redevelopment. Since then, the communities of the Placencia Peninsula, in particular, have engaged in rapid tourism development as an economic strategy for securing local livelihoods, culminating in the arrival of mass cruise tourism in 2016. In a region where environmental resources and services shape the backbone of the tourism industry, controversies have erupted around current and future impacts of tourism on the environment. One of the more polarizing debates to emerge surrounds the role of wastewater management, which is not centralized in the region and has resulted in discharges of untreated or partially treated wastewater into local waterways where many residents and nongovernmental organizations perceive negative consequences for both human and environmental health. Friction between local residents and government technocrats on how to address the issue reveals how infrastructure planning can become a technopolitical practice in which cost–benefit analyses in the form of life cycle costing and environmental impact assessment, presented through the rhetoric of sustainability, are used to influence how water and wastewater are governed in Placencia. More broadly, our findings suggest that the micropolitics of infrastructure design and development can be a powerful force that organizes technocratic governance.

中文翻译：

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伯利兹南部海岸的废水技术

在2001年大飓风摧毁了伯利兹的南海岸之后，“可持续的旅游业”成为了国民政府刺激经济发展的答案。自那时以来，尤其是普拉圣西亚半岛社区一直在大力发展旅游业，以此作为确保当地生计的经济战略，并最终在2016年实现了大规模邮轮旅游的到来。在该地区，环境资源和服务构成了骨干力量在旅游业中，围绕当前和未来的旅游业对环境的影响引发了争议。围绕废水管理的作用，出现的两极分化辩论最为激烈，污水不在该地区集中，导致未经处理或未经部分处理的废水排入当地水道，许多居民和非政府组织对人类和环境健康均产生负面影响。当地居民与政府技术专家之间如何解决该问题的摩擦揭示了基础设施规划如何能够成为一种技术政治实践，在这种实践中，通过以可持续性的口头表达了以生命周期成本和环境影响评估为形式的成本效益分析，影响Placencia中水和废水的治理方式。更广泛地说，我们的发现表明，基础设施设计和开发的微观政治可以成为组织技术官僚治理的强大力量。