Value reclamation from informal municipal solid waste management: green neoliberalism and inclusive development in Lagos, Nigeria

Public perception and awareness of waste management from Benin City

“…As such, sustainable mitigation and adaptation measures would be more successful if they are well understood and enabled people to engage in economic activities that provided a higher standard of living. For instance, adapting recycling as www.nature.com/scientificreports/ both a mitigation and adaptation option could greatly assist with the current situation since it directly can create local wealth as well as significantly reduce the amount of MSW generating harmful GHG emissions 12,20,26 . A way forward would be to enact an all-inclusive waste management policy to deliver effective awareness and strengthen communication channels between working groups compiling GHG emissions inventory.…”

“…They are typified by overflowing dumpsters, mountains of open refuse dumps (i.e., on virtually every street), and makeshift landfills on the edge of larger suburbs and towns. Attendee problems are also evident, especially where burning occurs, since properly operated landfills are nonexistent and often rodent infested with surface and ground water pollution concerns 4,12,[20][21][22][23] . As such, the collection and transport of MSW requires the largest demand on municipal budgets but has been seen to have the greatest impact on urban living 24 .…”

Claiming value in a heterogeneous solid waste configuration in Kampala

“…A recent study from Lagos pulls beyond formal versus informal starting points. Mbah et al (2019) demonstrate the autonomy that intricate and micro-scale practices of waste workers and traders have achieved in Lagos by developing practices and spaces to extract value out of waste and argue that this assemblage, or "people as infrastructure" to quote Simone (2004), forms a base through which negotiations between formal and informal systems might not only be possible but also required in building more integrated, effective and possibly more just and less polluting solid waste management systems. 1 This is carried further by Fredericks (2018) in her Garbage Citizenship, who closely follows how people configure themselves in relation to waste in Accra's wastescape.…”

“…Solid waste infrastructure is profoundly heterogeneous given that waste is irregular in key materials handling properties, unpredictably changeable and always problematic (Niessen, 2002). As a category in policy, technical and even academic language however, it often appears simple, straightforward and homogenous, as in the recent "Integrated Solid Waste Management" policy of Addis Abeba (Bjerkli, 2015) or similar efforts in Lagos to create a municipal solid waste management system (Mbah et al, 2019). Nevertheless, "solid waste" is unruly and difficult to work with precisely because its materiality is specific, textured and changing across contexts.…”

“…AlthoughMbah et al (2019) perhaps too lightly skip over critiques of "green neoliberalism," they effectively show how vast and informally organised waste geographies that operate across the city, links across local and higher scales.…”