Between the market and the developmental state – the place and limits of pro-poor ENGO led “waste-preneurship” in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Southern Waste geographies have focused on informal waste-picking and the emergence of neoliberal waste regimes as responses to inadequate Household Solid Waste Management (HWSM) – exploring cost-benefit relationships, labour, and market dynamics, respectively. Less understood regarding reconfigurations of waste governance is the role and performance of Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs) that have attempted to improve HSWM and recycling practices through Community-Based Recycling Interventions (CBRIs). Exploring the case of Wildlands Conservation Trust (WCT) “wastepreneur” initiative in rural and peri-urban communities in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, this study sought to critically assess the sustainability and labour dynamics of the intervention, highlighting its response to changing conditions. The project had initial successes in both facilitating and compensating pro-poor peri-urban waste-picking, generated high expectations and positively impacted recycling practices and perceptions in the process. After a point, however, the initiative experienced financial and institutional challenges which precipitated a restructuring of the initiative in line with prevailing recycling market dynamics – of which it had been naïve – and changing government labour funding; fostering a significant downscaling and disappointment on the part of participants. The findings highlight the limitations of CBRIs in hybrid governance contexts and with underdeveloped recycling markets, and the need for analysis that moves beyond critiques of neoliberalism to consider the ongoing role of the developmental state in local urban service provision.

KEYWORDS:

• Household Solid Waste Management
• Community-Based Recycling Interventions
• Wastepreneurship
• Neoliberal waste management
• Environmental Non-Governmental Organisation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant UID: 98684) and Wildlands Conservation Trust for their financial support of this study, as well as the stakeholders that participated in the study. We also thank the peer review authors for their valuable comments and feedback of our paper.

Disclosure statement

This study is financially sponsored by the National Research Foundation of South Africa and this may lead to certain content of the study been licenced to the National Research Foundation of South Africa. I have hereby disclosed these interests fully to Taylor & Francis and have a conflict resolution plan for any potential conflicts resulting from this agreement.

Notes

1 According to Samson (2009), in Metsimaholo, South Africa, the municipality's private sector contract amounted to an enclosure of the waste commons which dispossessed waste-pickers of control over their livelihood and confined them to the informal economy.

2 The CEBA is a national set of geographical clusters that contain various WCT interventions that promote enviropreneurship and community-based climate change adaptation.

3 Pietermaritzburg is located in the Msunduzi river basin, where the formation of mountains around the city creates a distinctive barrier between the rural and urban areas of the municipality, as well as limiting the city's potential to expand - resulting in small urban hubs forming outside the city (IDP 2016).

4 Many preferred essential items or cash instead of items they did not consider essential. “I want to be rewarded with cash and not with items that I do not need” (Interview, 09 September 2016, PMB, SA). After that, WCT proposed the use of electronic funds transfer systems and vouchers.

5 The MLM only supports small recycling private sector SMMEs, as per requirement in their Integrated Waste Management Plan.

6 The Wildlands CEO lamented that paper recycling was likely to drop off after SAPPI and MONDI, the two major pulp and paper corporations in South Africa, have stopped purchases, just as the suspension of Chinese recycling imports has caused large stockpiles of cardboard. Likewise, there is no active market for steel cans.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation [grant number 98684].