A significant segment of the urban population in many low-income countries
derives their living from the harvest of marketable materials from urban waste streams.
The activities of so-called "scavengers" or waste pickers in many African, Asian, and
Latin American cities have also come to be understood to have environmental benefits:
the diversion of materials from the urban waste stream decreases the volume of wastes
that need to be collected, transported and disposed of. However, due to their daily
contact with garbage, these men, women, and children are usually associated with dirt,
disease, and squalor. The work of the scavenger is often conceptualized as being poverty
driven and undertaken as a survival strategy or coping mechanism in a harsh urban
environment.
In recent years, various programs and projects have been developed by nongovernmental
organizations, religious institutions, community-based organizations, and
local governments to address the needs of scavengers. Such intervention schemes are
designed in one way or another to alter the scavengers' existing situations.
This study looks at the possible linkages between the evolving understanding of
scavenging and the various approaches to intervention that it engenders. This study first
examines how scholars and researchers analyze waste picking issues and their
suggestions for potential interventions and then relates this understanding to how
institutions, citizens, non-governmental organizations, and aid agencies are addressing
these issues in practice.
It is found that different conceptualizations of waste picking issues have led to
different intervention prescriptions, and that the prescribed interventions are motivated by
environmental, economic, or humanitarian concerns. This study contends that the
recommended and implemented intervention prescriptions are simply promoting market
means in an attempt to achieve humanitarian ends, and, therefore, are only short-term
measures that will not solve the identified waste picking issues.
Data sources used in this effort include academic journals, conference papers,
case studies of development programs, newspaper articles, Web sites, and field reports.
Data were also obtained by contacting researchers and organizations that have studied or
are currently working with waste pickers in a variety of geographical settings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10258 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Gauley, Steven W. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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