Based on empirical investigations in two ordinary cities in emerging countries—Vitória in Brazil and Coimbatore in India—we explain why municipal waste management in the South cannot exclude so-called "informal" actors without risking failure. This observation is now unanimously recognized, but the reasons for it have not been explicitly explained.
We start from the empirical observation of conflicts of appropriation that arise when municipal selective collection schemes are introduced and transcend the dichotomy between large private operators and small wastepickers. These clashes lead us to formulate the following central question: who owns waste, res derelictae, objects precisely defined by their abandonment?
This is where our research makes its contribution: by confronting economic theory with an urban planning approach, we demonstrate that urban waste is an impure public good (or 'bad'): rival, but non-excludable. This characteristic is due as much to disruptions in waste collection services as to the market value of a growing number of materials—provided they are collected at source.
Finally, by addressing the issue on a more macro scale, we argue that the local trade in dry waste is directly influenced by the prices of virgin or secondary raw materials (where such markets exist). This influence of the global economy on a local urban service allows us to identify emerging strategies of urban mining that raise the question of the legitimacy of appropriation with renewed urgency.
Keywords:
Urban waste, Political economy, Emerging countries, Conflicts, Brazil, India
Thesis defended on February 21, 2013
Doctoral school:
City, Transportation, and Territories