5. 0 Appendix (Case study summaries)

5.1 Kenya

Community-Based Waste Management for Environment Management and Income Generation in Low Income Areas: A Case Study of Nairobi, Kenya

Kenya has one of the highest urban-rural migration rates in Africa. Nairobi, being the capital city faces severe problems in the provision of urban services. The Nairobi City Council (NCC), being the Local Authority in charge of urban services, has been unable to provide the conventional waste management techniques.

Thus one of the key environmental issues in Kenya is waste management. The study focuses on the problems and opportunities of community-based waste management in seven community based organizations (CBOs) mainly women's groups residing in informal settlements.

Women's groups started composting organic waste as a means of improving environmental conditions and generating income through the sale of compost. The central purpose of the study is to assess the success of these composting projects in meeting the communities' environmental and development goals.

Local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), CBOs, the government through the Nairobi City Council, a Youth Sports Association and the Uvumbuzi Club (a membership organization) have been actively involved in the project. The NGOs provide training, advice, and credit to these groups. NCC helps in the provision of equipment when there is a city wide clean up campaign undertaken by Nairobians. However, the communities themselves, particularly the women continue to be the dominant force behind the projects.

The study shows that communities are capable and willing to provide an urban service like waste management when local authorities are unable to do so. In Nairobi out of the 800 - 1000 tons of waste generated everyday, the NCC can only manage to collect 400 tons and it is estimated that scavengers collect 20 tons.

The participatory research techniques employed reveal that significant environmental improvements have been achieved through composting including improved health, urban agriculture opportunities, better drainage and access within the communities, and the potential to address rural-urban imbalances in resource flows.

Although important links have been made between environmental management, income generation and community development, composting has not had direct impact on two serious environmental problems of informal settlements: human waste disposal and poor housing.

The composting projects have also been less successful in their role of generating income. Income generation has faced several problems. The biggest problem is finding a market for the compost. The expense of transportation and the short storage time required to make it viable for use prevents the groups from bringing the compost to an accessible point of sale.

The resale value of compost is low and the inputs required form a significant proportion of expenditure for low-income women. The area chief (local official) also demands an unreasonable rent, adding on to the high existing costs. The problem is worsened due to lack of access to credit. There is also a stigma attached to scavengers in the community.

Gender related constraints are felt acutely by the women. The women rarely get support from the men in the community. Women's needs are therefore not looked into and due importance is not given to the work they do.

A major recommendation is to include the communities in any development efforts, from planning through decision making to actual implementation. Public awareness needs to be created through the media and youth groups to garner support for waste reduction and recycling.

Waste management can be carried out successfully as an income generating activity if the formal waste processing sector can be developed to recycle inorganic waste and if greater use is made of compost in urban agriculture and as a replacement for artificial fertilizers in the rural areas.

The waste management groups need to involve both men and women. This can only be done with gender sensitization programs, especially with the assistance of NGOs.

Fiscal and credit incentives are also necessary if the projects are to develop and continue and the formal waste management sector also has to be promoted so that it can be integrated with the informal one.

Gender impacts of Alternative Sanitation System on the Lives of Women in South Africa: A Case study of SOSHANGUVE

The study area is located in the northern part of Pretoria, in the province of Gauteng, one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The case study area name SOSHANGUVE TT was derived by the researcher from the abbreviations of the three major tribal groups residing in the area (Sotho, Shangaan, Nguni, Venda - the first two letters of each one). SOSHANGUVE, the formal sector has a population of 438,000 and the informal sector, SOSHANGUVE TT has 44,000 househods.

The objectives of the study are to find out the socio-economic impacts of alternative sanitation systems on the lives of the residents of SOSHANGUVE TT (informal townships). It looks at the aspect of replicability and desirability especially from a gender perspective.

At least 60 % of the South African population have neither basic services nor shelter. The government of South Africa has made housing and basic services as priority areas. The formal township has standard services like portable water, electricity, tarred roads, sewerage systems and drainage.

In 1992, SOSHANGUVE TT was created when the informal settlements were allocated serviced sites with title deeds. The area has gravel roads and communal water stand pipes which are shared by about twelve families. The government provides water and toilets in the informal sector and the residents are expected to cater for their own shelter. In these areas, the aim of the government is to provide cost effective sanitation systems. Before installation, the state consulted the civic leaders on level of services to be provided and the choice of sanitation system to be installed. At the time the leaders were all males which has an important bearing on the outcomes.

The toilet is the Aqua Privy system. The Aqua Privy system was introduced in areas where there was no access to individual water connections. It requires less water than the conventional system. The toilet requires pouring water into the bowl after every use and the effluent flows into a soakway. The sludge needs to be emptied periodically. No foreign objects can be put in and only clean water is to be used.

The study found that there are major drawbacks of the system from the women's viewpoint in terms of the design and location of the toilets; maintenance problems; the cost implications; perceptions around hygiene and health and environmental impacts.

The system does not seem to be gender sensitive and therefore it is undesirable and unsuitable for the women as they were not involved in the initial design. Therefore, they face a number of problems as the location (facing the road) and size (very small) of the toilet structure is such as to disparage them. The costing did not take into account long term maintenance costs (financial and in terms of time) as the assumption was that the women would provide free labour . Social implications, size of family, needs of the different users such as the disabled and the old were not looked into. What has been the outcome of the Aqua Privy system has been that the women have become relegated to positions of sewerage drainers with added burdens .

Community Based Solid Waste Pilot Project in Luanda's Musseques

Urban population growth of 470 % over the last twenty years, coupled with the effects on existing infrastructure of a lengthy civil war, have resulted in serious solid waste management challenges for the city of Luanda, Angola. Population growth has occurred mainly in the unserviced musseques (informal, spontaneous settlements) of the city's peri-urban areas where difficult access, and widespread, unauthorized dumping render the waste management problem even more difficult. Traditional solutions are not feasible in this situation; to merely remove the backlog of accumulated waste from the musseques would require a 500 to 600 percent increase in collection capacity of the under funded provincial sanitation company.

With assistance from Canadian and Swiss organizations, Development Workshop implemented a pilot initiative to develop and test a model for sustainable management of solid waste from the musseques that are not served by environmental sanitation programs. The strategy is to study methods of reducing the daily waste production at source before it becomes refuse, reusing what can be reused, and recycling what can be recycled. Through these measures, the quantity of solid waste requiring collection will be reduced. Reduction makes it easier to collect waste, saves on collection costs of hauling waste out of the musseques into the landfill, and increases the feasibility of providing continuous waste removal services for unserviced areas. The active participation of the community is a key component.

Like most musseques, the project area is informally settled with minimal access to services. Roads were uneven dirt roads without surface drainage that become stagnant pools for months during the rainy season. A 300 metre radius around the largest unauthorized dumpsite (with 3,000 people) was the focus of the project's activities.

The project has challenged the widely held notion (in Luanda) that trucks and containers are the only way of getting rid of garbage and to keep the musseques clean. The pilot initiative has identified waste reduction and waste reuse as viable strategies for dealing with solid waste in the musseques and has set up a continuous removal system managed at community level. By separating sand from other household waste, the waste generated could be reduced at source by at least 50 % (by weight). Residents were taught that sand is not a waste but rather a useful commodity that must be treated separately from other household waste.

In unauthorized dumpsites where a backlog of uncollected waste has accumulated, a reduction in the range of 75 to 90 % (by weight) has been achieved by separating sand from waste. Sand separation at the dumpsite mainly used simple hand tools and a labour-intensive manual process of passing the waste through metal screens. With the dumpsite eliminated, a new site was identified for a new collection depot where residents deposit their waste. Regular removal has been arranged with Urbana 2000 (a private company contracted by the Provincial Government to manage the provincial sanitation company).

The sand recovered from the waste was reused as infill material to improve the roadways within the community through a food for work program. The project improved 16 sections of the roadway with a total area of 1800 square meters and eliminated the largest dumpsite. The improved areas have generally held well through the rains.

The project has also demonstrated that the active participation of the community and local leaders can help bring about significant improvements. Involvement in the project has helped to improve the management capacity and increased the confidence of local authorities and community leaders. Finally, the project demonstrates potentials for cooperative action in solid waste management among the community, local authorities, the private sector (Urbana 2000) and an NGO like the Development Workshop.

Its success to date has renewed the confidence and willingness of both the musseque residents and the government to address what has been viewed as an almost an insurmountable problem. But at the same time, the project had to confront deep-rooted views on the "proper" methods of waste removal in the musseques. Changes in the institutional context as the project got underway, the weak capacity at the local level, and financing and cost-recovery for waste removal services posed added challenges.

The project offers many valuable lessons for replicating the effort in other musseques and for scaling up the activities into a citywide program but further work is required to investigate and to ensure that key factors affecting the sustainability of operations and maintenance of a community based solid waste management programs are in place. These factors include the financing of solid waste services, the continued support by the local leaders and by the community, and the availability of removal services from Urbana 2000.