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- de Azevedo, Adalberto Mantovani Martiniano, et al.
(author)
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Inclusive Waste Governance and Grassroots Innovations for Social, Environmental And Economic Change
- 2018
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Participants of two research projects (Recycling Networks: Grassroots resilience tackling climate, environmental and poverty challenges (funded by the Swedish Research Council) and Mapping Waste Governance (funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) collaborate in offering a critical inter- and transdisciplinary perspective on waste and waste actors (waste picker cooperatives, associations, community-based organizations, partnerships, networks and NGOs). The research is conducted in the following cities: Buenos Aires (Argentina), São Paulo (Brazil), Vancouver and Montreal (Canada), Kisumu (Kenya), Managua (Nicaragua) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Together we examine the challenges that innovative grassroots initiatives and networks encounter in generating livelihoods to improve household waste collection and recycling, particularly in informal settlements of global South cities. We seek to map waste governance and successful waste management initiatives, arrangements and policies involving grassroots initiatives. In this report, we present a brief description of solid waste governance in the cities where we conducted fieldwork. We then illuminate some of our findings on grassroots innovations involving waste pickers or waste workers in these cities. Both research projects combine multi-case studies of waste picker groups and local government initiatives, apply qualitative research tools and participatory action research (e.g. photo voice, participant observation, workshops, surveys and interviews). We are interested in understanding processes, challenges and opportunities related to how these grassroots initiatives and networks operate to bring about socio-environmental and economic change? How they address challenges and what the assets are in everyday waste governance that can be explored to make waste governance more sustainable and thus more inclusive? Researchers involved in these two projects, key stakeholders from grassroots initiatives in these countries, representatives from some international waste picker networks and local and regional government officials from Kisumu, Kenya, met between 23rd and 29th of April 2018, in Kisumu to present and discuss the results of the first year of research activities, which are herewith documented.
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- Kain, Jaan-Henrik, 1960, et al.
(author)
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Characteristics, challenges and innovations of waste picker organizations: A comparative perspective between Latin American and East African countries
- 2022
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In: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 17:7
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Waste picker organisations (WPOs) around the globe collect, transport and process waste to earn their living but represent a widely excluded, marginalised and impoverished segment of society. WPOs are highly innovative, created by grassroots out of “nothing” to deliver economic, social and environmental sustainability. Still, we do not know how such innovations are developed, and how they are disseminated and adopted by other groups. This article examines characteristics, challenges and innovations of WPOs across five countries in Latin America and East Africa. It is based on quantitative and qualitative data regarding modes of organisation and management, gender, received support, business orientations, environmental and social contributions, and innovations developed in response to multiple challenges. The paper provides a comprehensive understanding of WPOs’ activities and their grassroots innovations in the Global South. The study shows how WPOs contribute significantly to the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the societies they serve as well as the wider urban societies. To start and maintain WPOs in informal settlements with a lack of infrastructure, institutional frameworks, and public and private investors is a difficult quest. WPOs take many different organisational forms depending on the complexity of local realities, ranging from advanced collective organization as cooperatives to small self-help groups and microentrepreneurs. Self-organisation into regional and national networks provides economic opportunities, autonomy and stability as well as political influence. Yet, institutional support is fundamental and the lack thereof threatens their existence. Sustaining WPOs as important providers of socio-environmental benefits through governmental and non-governmental actions is a worthwhile undertaking that builds sustainability.
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- Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(author)
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Grassroots innovations in 'extreme' urban environments. The inclusive recycling movement
- 2023
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In: Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. - : SAGE Publications. - 2399-6544 .- 2399-6552. ; 41:2, s. 351-374
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Waste pickers all over the world work innovatively to reduce the environmental footprint of cities as they struggle to meet their critical livelihood obligations. Informed by the case of waste picker organizations (WPOs) this article examines how grassroots initiatives and extreme-niche innovations are created and sustained by mobilizing resources, rationales and relations. The study is informed by a cross-national survey and in-depth interviews with WPOs in Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Kenya and Tanzania, and builds upon theories of grassroots innovation movements. The findings show how operating in contexts of extreme scarcity, these grassroots organisations tap into local resources, e.g. tacit knowledge, economies of affection and other socially embedded institutional resources. Blending material and environmental rationales, contributes to expanding their audiences and to gaining further support. In such deprived urban contexts, radical and cumulative crises and events hindering residents’ livelihoods can paradoxically also spark ingenuity out of necessity, and the transformation of these settings into extreme niches of innovation. Finally, the mobilization of relations through the formation of networks linking WPOs with supportive intermediaries and global circuits of solidarity becomes another fundamental resilience strategy by which WPOs can navigate contested environments and insert their extreme-niche innovations in governmental structures. By simultaneously adopting a broad repertoire of strategies of insertion, contention, and mobilization WPO and their innovations thrive in highly constrained environments. We conclude with reflecting on how ‘extreme’ niches of innovation − at the cracks of the formal city, economy and waste systems − can unleash the creative power of stigmatized, illiterate and neglected grassroots to experiment with new solutions in resource-poor environments.
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- Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(author)
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Inclusive recycling movements: a green deep democracy from below
- 2020
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In: Environment and Urbanization. - : SAGE Publications. - 0956-2478 .- 1746-0301. ; In Press
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper examines the multiple strategies articulated by grassroots recycler networks to bring about socioenvironmental change. The paper shows how these networks are an emblematic case of grassroots governmentality, whereby urban poor communities contribute to building more inclusive environmental regimes by developing technologies of power more typical of the powerful. These technologies include enumeration, with its resulting self-knowledge; the production of discourses and rationalities of social inclusion and environmental sustainability; and engagement in open and diverse alliances, at times with actors holding apparently antagonistic interests. The paper also reveals how recycling networks are a representative case of deep and green democracy. It is deep democracy, as grassroots networks strive to gain deep and true representativeness in their territories. It is green democracy, as it illustrates alternative pathways to environmental governance that is not limited to state and global organizations, but that also includes a range of control techniques emanating from the communities themselves.
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- Zapata Campos, María José, 1972, et al.
(author)
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(Re)gaining the urban commons: everyday, collective, and identity resistance
- 2022
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In: Urban Geography. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0272-3638 .- 1938-2847. ; 44:7, s. 1259-1284
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper examines the everyday, collective, and identity resistance mobilized by the urban poor to (re)gain their right to the commons and contest urban exclusion. Informed by the community of waste pickers at La Chureca, the city dump of Managua, Nicaragua, the paper, builds on theories of discard studies, urban commons, and Bayat’s everyday resistance. It shows, first, how deprived communities can create their own commons through quietly encroaching on public space and using such resources as waste. Second, it reveals how activating passive networks (e.g. spatial and professional solidarity, kinship) can be fundamental in commoning, by triggering intermittent collective resistance, giving rise to more permanent active networks (cooperatives and trade unions). Third, it shows how simultaneous strategies of collaboration with the state can be mobilized when necessary. Finally, it demonstrates how constructing a resistance identity becomes an important sociocultural mechanism for claiming access to the commons, on the basis of a heterogeneous configuration of territorial, environmental, professional, family, and spiritual identities. Resistance identity stems from and supports individual and collective resistance, to maintain access to the commons. We conclude that all forms of everyday, collective, and identity resistance are essential, and none alone is sufficient to (re)gain the commons.
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