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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain.
Sec. Waste Management
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frsus.2024.1409418
This article is part of the Research Topic 50 Years of World Environment Day: Solutions to Plastic Pollution – Waste Management Perspective View all 3 articles

Municipal Waste Governance: Proposal of an Index for Global South Countries

Provisionally accepted
Camila Sasahara Camila Sasahara 1*Letícia S. Rodrigues Letícia S. Rodrigues 1Tiago B. Cetrulo Tiago B. Cetrulo 2Bianca G. Gimenez Bianca G. Gimenez 1,3Melanie V. Alencar Melanie V. Alencar 1,3Carla Elliff Carla Elliff 1,3Natália M. Cetrulo Natália M. Cetrulo 1,2Sylmara L. Gonçalves Dias Sylmara L. Gonçalves Dias 1Luis A. Conti Luis A. Conti 1Vitória M. Scricha Vitória M. Scricha 1,3Alexander Turra Alexander Turra 1,3
  • 1 University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
  • 2 State University of Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
  • 3 UNESCO Chair for Ocean Sustainability, São Paulo, Brazil

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The quality of municipal solid waste governance is a key public issue associated with environmental, social and health concerns. This paper aimed to develop a Municipal Waste Governance Index to support the assessment and monitoring of municipal solid waste management in municipalities of the Global South. The development of the Municipal Waste Governance Index comprised six stages: definition of a theoretical framework for monitoring MSW governance, data selection and usability analysis, normalization, weighting, and aggregation through statistical and participatory methods and, finally, classification and visualization of results in dimensions and an index. The dimensions of the Municipal Waste Governance Index are: Regulatory Quality, Voice and Accountability, and Government Effectiveness. After defining the steps and dimensions of the Municipal Waste Governance Index, a case study was performed with Brazilian municipalities. The results of the study show that most municipalities have medium Government Effectiveness, low Voice and Accountability, and high and very high Regulatory Quality. Furthermore, these results identify critical points in municipal solid waste governance in the Global South, such as Voice and Accountability concerning formal structures of social participation and the informal system, which includes waste pickers, and existing data, completeness and consistency of the database for accountability; and in Government Effectiveness which is primarily associated with socioeconomic development. Despite the high Regulatory Quality condition in Brazil, municipal solid waste governance does not reflect it, but rather the mechanisms of participation, accountability, and quality of public services performed in municipalities.This academic research has practical potential consequences, concerning the improvement of MSW governance in municipalities of the Global South.

    Keywords: Governance index, Municipal solid waste, Local governance, Monitoring, Global South

    Received: 30 Mar 2024; Accepted: 15 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sasahara, Rodrigues, Cetrulo, Gimenez, Alencar, Elliff, Cetrulo, Gonçalves Dias, Conti, Scricha and Turra. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Camila Sasahara, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

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