Have you come across large piles of garbage in neighborhoods and streets, or smelly waste disposal sites polluting the environment of low and middle income countries? Are you also convinced that improvements are necessary and do you want to know what kind of sustainable solutions are appropriate to better manage waste and enhance recycling and recovery? If yes, this course is for you! This course provides an overview of the municipal solid waste management situation in developing countries covering key elements of the waste management system, with its technical, environmental, social, financial and institutional aspects. Besides understanding the challenges you will learn about appropriate and already applied solutions through selected case studies. The course also covers strategic planning and policy issues discussing future visions for waste management and the aspect of a circular and green economy. Considering the importance of the organic waste fraction, the course covers several organic waste treatment technology options such as composting, anaerobic digestion, and some other innovative approaches. MOOC SERIES “SANITATION, WATER AND SOLID WASTE FOR DEVELOPMENT” This course is one of four in the series “Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development". Please visit the course page for more information.
2.2 The role of the public sector
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Do curso por École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Municipal Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries
1141 classificações
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
1141 classificações
Na lição
Week 2: Introduction to Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries
In the second week, the course will focus on the governance aspects also referred as the “soft” aspects of a municipal solid waste management (MSWM) system. The different stakeholders and their roles and responsibilities will be explained as well as legislative issues and financial mechanisms.
Conheça os instrutores
Dr. Christian Zurbrügg
Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development / Eawag
Imanol Zabaleta
Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development / Eawag
Félix Schmidt
Sanitary Engineering, Water and Waste Management / EPFL
Hi, and welcome back for this module on the role of the public sector.
When we look at wastegovernance, one key stakeholder,
of course, is the public sector.
Solid waste management, in fact, is often cited as one of the
most visible indicators of the state of urban governance.
We have already talked about the role of the public sector as
policy maker and regulator in the last module.
Often another function of the public sector is the one of service providers,
especially when you think of the urban local government.
In this module, we should look at this and other main challenges
that the public sector faces in solid waste management.
There are many public sector institutions representing the government
that are responsible for solid waste management.
Good institutional arrangements inside the public sector include
clear organizational structures and clear assignments of roles
and responsibilities of the various public agencies.
In many developing countries, however, there is often a strong
institutional fragmentation.
Fragmentation and a lack of clarity in roles makes it very difficult
to hold concerned agencies accountable for what they do.
It also makes coordination a major challenge.
In the worst case, for instance, the department of cleansing
may depend on vehicles and drivers which also work for the highway department
and may be under the jurisdiction of the central transport department.
And the salaries for the laborers and drivers are paid
by another unit altogether, for instance the personal organization
or the central finance ministry.
In such a case then, four or even more separate departments
can be involved in day to day way service operations.
This is a practical nightmare for management.
What however is crucial is to separate between a regulator and an operator.
Else transparency accountability and enforcement
are extremely challenging if not impossible.
Another critical issue is whether there is a sustained political
commitment to solid waste management, typically by the mayor
and not only in times when things go bad, but also when things go well.
However, we have to pay attention that the
solid waste department is not subject to political maneuvers.
One key issue always cited is transparency and accountability of the public sector.
As this is a service provided to the citizens, it is also scrutinized by them.
It requires their acceptance and their collaboration.
And transparency and accountability are the main way to build trust.
We have not been talking much about corruption until now, but
in waste governance, this is also a major issue of concern.
Integrity of waste governance is an important element of building
a trust relationship among different stakeholders, which again
is facilitated through a very clear strategy of transparency
and accountability. Waste collection is usually best provided
at the lowest appropriate level of new sub administration which
means closest to the service users, the people.
But in metropolitan areas or small urban centers,
the organization and the investment in larger infrastructure such
as waste treatment or disposal may need to be organized on a
unified base across cities or across the county.
Here, inter-municipal cooperation can be an essential element.
This involves an approach that uses synergies by cooperation
between municipalities in order to increase public service
efficiency and also create economies of scale.
In other words, it is about joining forces.
One other aspect is that of professional competence.
Solid waste departments are unfortunately often not seen as
a prestigious department to work for or to direct.
At the same time, you have probably already realized that working
in the waste sector is a highly interdisciplinary task.
You need the expertise in management, engineering, logistics or social mobilization.
So, we have a major problem in the public sector which is a
bad image, a low recognition of the work, although it is highly
complex and it is a demanding challenge.
The lack of qualified staff and professional competences affects
performance and decision making.
And this may be even worse in small towns and municipalities.
As often, the best qualified professionals like to remain
close to the large cities or even the capital.
Another aspect is the fact that hiring governmental
employees often does not relate to skills but rather to social connections.
And once hired, there are kinds of limited possibilities
to value or to correct performance of the work.
More often than not, local authorities will lack the competences
to negotiate, interact with private sector, donor agencies,
or even business people or salespeople that promise
some magic waste treatment solutions.
In order to develop staff capacities and competence, a good
starting point is for governmental institutions to collaborate
with local universities, NGOs or consultants.
Strengthening formal education on waste management topics,
both technology and governance related is a very good investment
for obtaining qualified staff.
Another option is also to connect local government officers
among each other to facilitate an exchange of experiences
for collective learning.
For instance, under the name PEARL, Peer Experience And
Reflective Learning, a network was launched in India in 2007
by the ministry of urban development for cross learning and
exchanging experiences.
Documenting and publishing experiences is a good way to share,
not only showing best practices but maybe also things that don't
go so well in order to learn from failures.
The PEARL network from India, for instance, has recently published
a compendium of good practices in urban solid waste management.
It is structured into different thematic sections as shown here.
You will also find this document on the suggested readings or
on a web page, if you want to look into more detail into the
various good practices.
Developing public sector capacity and the skills to manage this
complex task does not come overnight.
As an example, let me show you the case of Maputo in Mozambique.
Mozambique, in a decentralization process,
transferred the responsibilities of waste management to the local
government or to the municipalities through their local government act.
This decentralization process, however, was not matched with
a transfer of financial, technical or institutional resources.
And therefore, it was very difficult for these municipalities
to provide an acceptable service.
A specific solid waste management regulation only followed in 2004.
This finally gave local authorities the power to adopt specific rules,
establish fees for waste management
or approve license processes and technologies.
It also required the local authorities to develop and submit
waste management plans that were then approved by the ministry
for coordination of environmental action.
For Maputo, waste management falls under the responsibility
of the directorate of hygiene which is responsible for the execution of collection services,
contracting, supervision and disposal site management.
Street sweeping was handed over
to the urban district administrations.
Maputo introduced specific bylaws in 2008.
The current collection system comprises adequate solutions for
different characteristics of this city.
I will talk more about this in a later module.
The municipality still provides part of the service.
Other services are subcontracted to private sector or micro
enterprises and they achieve an excellent collection coverage of 82 %.
Finally, the last aspect I want to mention in relation to strengthening
municipal authorities is the aspect of data management.
It has already come up in various previous modules and you will
probably be hearing more about it again and again, also when
talking about benchmarking.
Measuring performance and practice can help determine effectiveness
of policies, but also the effectiveness of the funds being spent
for solid waste management.
Besides collecting the data, it is of course essential to be
able to process the raw data into useful information which can
then be used to make wise decisions.
This again requires respective skills and capacities.
This of course comes at a cost but data collection is becoming
more affordable due to innovations in information technology.
So, let me summarize this module with this slide:
first, I highlighted the importance of clear institutional responsibilities
among public sector agencies.
Ideally, it would be nice to have a unique entity with operational
and financial independence as well as the power to implement.
Institutional fragmentation in waste management makes life very complicated.
The public way sector needs strong sustained political support,
not only when things go bad.
But it should not be hijacked for political motives.
And finally, we touched upon the subject of professional expertise
and how to strengthen capacity in the public sector.
Thank you for listening.
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