Solid Waste Management and Recycling Actors, Partnerships and Policies in Hyderabad, India and Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

The project on which this book is based, results from the interest within the group of staff and junior researchers at the University of Amsterdam on how urban environmental management could be made more sustainable. Earlier studies in India and Peru had given us knowledge on how widespread small enterprises recycling waste materials for profit and people picking waste were in many cities in the South. It also led to a realisation of how important the contribution of such activities was to reducing waste flows, despite the fact that such activities occurred in semi-illegal contexts and received no recognition from governments or middle-class residents. The debate on how to combine ecological sustainability with socio-economic improvements in the lives of many urban citizens, led to the formulation of the project that lies behind this book. It aimed at improving our understanding of the factors that underlie the dynamics of the provision of a particular urban environmental service (solid waste management), and also at providing policymakers and city managers with ideas about how they can tackle the problems of improving the quality of the urban environment they are dealing with daily.