4ISA BAUD
1.2. CHANGING PERSPECTIVES IN URBAN SERVICE PROVISION:THECASEOF SWM
Research on urban SWM in developing countries has developed from two main
concerns; the concern for increasing complexity and costs of waste management,
which are proving difficult to manage efficiently and effectively by local authorities,
and the concern for environmental impacts of growing waste flows. The latter
perspective covers three areas: problems for the environmental health/public health of
urban citizens^4 , health and safety hazards for those working with solid waste, and
problems of sustainable development in terms of resource recovery and recycling of
waste materials. These are coupled to the classic concerns of safe disposal of wastes
that can be absorbed by local and regional sinks^5.
The first concern has come from the perspective in which local government has
primary responsibility for SWM, and carries out its activities from a primary concern
with public health issues. Although we currently talk about ‘environmental health’,
many local authorities have limited that view to activities concerning ‘public health’.
The primary perspective on SWM developed in the course of the nineteenth century
in Europe and exported to colonies around the world, was that of public health. Solid
waste accumulating in densely populated urban areas posed health hazards, which
local authorities sought to control by providing effective collection, transport and
disposal services. The organisation of such basic services was carried out through
local government, Health departments, in both British and French administration
systems. Primary objectives were the effective removal of waste from neighbourhood
residential areas, without interference, and disposal sites outside the city boundaries.
The limits to this approach became increasingly clear in industrialised countries
during the sixties and seventies as consumption patterns led to sizeable growth of
waste flows, whose disposal went beyond the limits of social acceptability and the
absorption capacity of local and global sinks (cf. Sachs et al, 1997; Mitlin and Satter-
thwaite, 1997). A perspective aimed at promoting greater sustainable development in
the use of resources has influenced solid waste management practices, and is gradually
becoming implemented through policy guidelines at national levels in a number of
industrialised countries. Guidelines and directives to reduce waste generation, and
promote waste recovery are laid down according to the ‘waste management hier-
archy’, in which waste prevention, reuse, recycling and energy recovery are designed
- The term environmental health is used nowadays instead of public health, as it was felt that public
health was linked too much to direct medical provisions (Hardoy et al., 2001). However, SWM has
always been an integral part of the Public Health Department in the British administrative system, and
still is so in the countries under study. Therefore, we use the term environmental health for the general
discussion, but retain the term public health when referring to the specific situation in Nairobi and
Hyderabad. - These are currently coupled to the concern in the North to reduce use of resources in production, and
segregate waste materials at source to increase the possibilities of waste recovery.