278 JOHAN POST AND ISA BAUD
service in their areas through the VGDS. In Nairobi the absence of any sort of entre-
preneur interest group partly explains why no by-laws have been designed to accom-
modate privatised collection services. Networking among resident organisations
seems to be a promising avenue for exercising pressure on governments to make them
more responsive and accountable (cf. the ‘We Can Do It movement’ in Nairobi).
Fostering these forms of social capital can help to turn authorities into more reliable
actors and/or partners
13.4. TOWARDS MORE SUSTAINABLE SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT:THE TRADE-OFFS
This study was designed to provide a more integrated analysis of the dynamics of the
SWM system than is usually given in the field of urban planning and management. It
goes beyond the focus on specific issues, such as privatisation of SWC, livelihoods of
waste pickers, or potentials of composting groups. It has also analysed in a qualitative
manner the performance of SWM systems beyond the customary focus on either tech-
nical, financial, socio-economic or environmental aspects. This approach follows
from the concept of integrated sustainable waste management as developed by
researchers from WASTE (Lardinois and van de Klundert, 1995; van de Klundert and
Anschütz, 1999). Obviously, we could only partly meet the requirements of such an
integrated approach, which is ambitious because it not only takes on board most stake-
holders, solid waste sub-sectors, and aspects of sustainable development, but also
seeks to link it to other systems (e.g. health, infrastructure) and to encompass various
scale levels. Nevertheless, the study enables us to comment on a number of important
areas of contention when it comes to making SWM more sustainable.
A first basic issue preventing the SWM sector from increasing contributions to
sustainable development is related to the existing segmentation of state responsibili-
ties for the different aspects included (e.g. the sectoral basis of government organisa-
tion). This means that mandates for policy initiatives and actions integrating
environmental health, ecological, and socio-economic concerns are not readily given
priority. Coordination across government departments would be an alternative, but is
notoriously difficult to accomplish in actual practice. This situation is particularly
vexing in the case of integrating ecological concerns in current patterns of solid waste
collection, transportation and disposal. Collection is mandated to local Public Health
Departments, with a focus on public health in the conventional sense (rather than on a
more encompassing agenda of environmental health). In contrast, environmental
issues are officially mandated to provincial or national departments, focusing on
large-scale (national or global) environmental issues, usually in the context of natural
resource management. Although some attention is given to urban environmental
issues within these departments, this is mostly oriented towards industrial pollution.
This means that there is no clear mandate for any level of government to reduce house-
hold waste flows, to promote waste separation and to maximize recycling and reuse of
resources used by households and institutions. It must be said, however, that in India