Scaling discourse analysis refers to the necessity to consider environmental discourse a multi-dimensional and diversified practice. Depending on the various levels of state and society at which environmental policies are applied and depending on the geographical scale at which their solution is sought, we have to differentiate both policy processes and outcomes in environmental politics. We introduce the importance of scale in mapping the multiple trajectories through which complex and intertwined relations of power produce and reproduce uneven geographies in the area of urban environmental policy. More specifically, we are seeking to cast light on the relationships between scale, discourse and the politics of urban environments. Using an approach influenced by urban political ecology, the relevant discourses here are constructed in a triangle of terms: urban, ecology and policy. In this triangle, there are no givens and invariables. Its three points are constituted through contested discourses and practices. We approach our analysis from an understanding of urban water policies in two municipalities Namibia and South Africa as the outcome of a discursive and material practice operating at various levels of state and society and as an integral part of wider processes of social and political change. Keywords: Scale, discourse, urban environmental policy, water, Southern Africa.