Municipal Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries: Future Challenges and Possible Opportunities

Abstract

Most developing and least developed countries are currently facing serious development challenges that may enhanced if same old traditional development plans are still in persistence. In the wake of the recently emerged global economic crises development challenges are expected to increasing as a result of the adverse impact on the capabilities of developed countries to offer needed assistance to developing countries. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and later the adoption of the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21 and following the declaration and adoption of the millennium development goals (MDG) in 2000 things on the ground have not significantly improved. The United Nations’ recently released a report that shows that most developing and least developed countries are far from reaching the MDG targets set for the year 2015 (UN, 2010). The impacts are expected to exceed the continuous widening of the gap between the developed and developing countries to the extent that might badly affect sustainable development. After more than two decades from the adoption of the notion “sustainable development”, it could be claimed the notion was portrayed in different ways when comparing developed to developing countries. Developed countries treat Sustainable development as an environmental concept placing the emphasis on intergenerational equity focusing on future needs (Carter, 2001), while most developing countries are placing emphasis on intra-generational equity focusing at present needs which are often social and economic ones. Such different portrays played significant role in shaping the capabilities of developing countries to meet the sustainable development challenges they are facing and consequently in widening the gap between developing and developed nations. In this context it is important to shed lights on major challenges facing sustainable development in several developing countries. These could be summarized as follows:  Population growth: the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) projected the 2050 world population to a range from 9.15 – 9.51 billion with different decrease in fertility rates in many developing and least developed countries (Bremner et al, 2010). The largest percentage increase by 2050 will be in Africa where population is expected to jump to more than 2 billion. Asia with 4.2 billion will likely experience smaller proportional increase than Africa, however this depends on China and India, where both populations accounts for about 60% of total Asia’s pollution. Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to experience the smallest proportional growth due to fertility