The South Asian region, home to nearly one-quarter of the world’s population, is witnessing fast urban growth, economic development and growing consumerism resulting in rapidly increasing amounts of municipal solid waste (MSW) that are expected to nearly triple between 2010 and 2025, representing the highest regional waste growth rate. At the same time, open dumping continues in many cities, garbage collection remains incomplete and processing facilities are deficient, leading to a wide range of local environmental problems, including air pollution from open burning of garbage, olfactory nuisances near and in residential neighbourhoods, pollution and clogging of water bodies due to open dumping and littering, soil and groundwater contamination through leachates from landfills.

The combined local impacts of inadequate municipal solid waste management (MSWM) render it a ‘cumulative’ global environmental issue due to the ubiquity of the problems they cause. Furthermore, climate change and effects of greenhouse gas emissions have made MSWM a ‘systemic’ global environmental challenge. Inappropriate MSWM practices, such as improper incineration and uncontrolled disposal of wastes, are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions; the anaerobic degradation of waste in landfills, for instance, produces significant amounts of methane .

The premise on which MSWM systems that are based on includes:

  • A governance structure with horizontal and downward accountabilities and
  • a localised, circular material waste chains

The ‘waste problem’ has also become one of the most pressing social issues in South Asian cities, as it is closely linked to drinking water quality, sanitation and human health affecting the urban poor the most and implying spatial inequities and socio-environmental injustices. Furthermore, MSWM policies and practices have a direct impact on employment opportunities and livelihoods, particularly on those of poor men and women in the informal sector, as formalization efforts have diverse effects on incomes, job security, occupational health and the decency of work .

The aims of this project include:

  1. Identify and analyse the processes, with a focus on political and sociocultural dimensions, that enable sustainable MSWM systems through an examination of post-crisis initiatives;
  2. Evaluate the potential for scaling-up of MSWM governance initiatives emerged in post-crisis situations;
  3. Promote sustainable MSWM systems through mutual learning, process documentation (video logs, etc.) and policy briefs.

The partners for the project include:

An update from our Progress and Review Meeting: Institutional Architecture and Waste Chain held in January 2020.