Appropriate Technology and Public Policy: The Urban Waste Management System in Cairo

Abstract

hen people are poor, jobs are scarce, productivity is low, inflation is rampant, population growth is high, and the per capita economy is stagnant, in what context does one frame environmental considerations? It is not that the impact of environmental deterioration is insignificant. Cairo, for example, is a city of eight to eleven million people with an infrastructure capacity for two million.' Air pollution, dirty streets, crumbling buildings, inadequate water and waste-water services, insufficient housing, and high rates of gastrointestinal disease, bilharsia, and hepatitis are common. Combine this with a national context of moderate economic growth, rapid population increase (2.7 percent a year), and issues related to the environment are not hard to recognize. But which issues does one address? And how can they be addressed in a positive manner so that material development is not seen as the only trade-off, and the reaction to environmental concerns of First Worlders are not shunted aside with Indira Ghandi's Stockholm Environment Conference statement that poverty is also pollution? It is in this context that we became engrossed in documenting, planning, and problem solving at the local level in one of Cairo's multitude of human, urban, and environmental problems. Our purpose in this paper is to explore some of the relationships between appropriate technology and environment in the context of Third World development considerations. We will use the specific example of the Cairo solid waste management system to illustrate our discussion and to draw some policy considerations directed both at the local level of problem solving and at the more general level of technology assessment and development.