Policy analysis on municipal solid waste management in Dhaka South City Corporation, Bangladesh: A qualitative study

Abstract

Background: Inadequate and improper municipal solid waste (MSW) management is one of the significant reasons behind the environmental deterioration in Bangladesh. The projected daily waste generation for 2025 in Dhaka City is 47,665 tons, half of which remains uncollected despite door-to-door community-based waste collection. There are few studies on MSW management in Bangladesh, most focusing on household-level waste management, measurement of the amount of MSW, etc., but none applied a political economy lens to examine the policy issues related to MSW management. This study aimed to explore the context, actors, and processes regarding MSW management of policies in Dhaka City, Bangladesh, applying the policy-triangle-framework. Methods: This study adopted an exploratory qualitative approach, and document reviews and key informant interviews were conducted from September 2016 to January 2017. Results: We found that the issue of MSW slowly entered the policy documents starting with the Sixth-Five Year Plan (2011-2015), with some earlier sporadic policy initiatives. Due to its being a relatively new concept, stakeholders still lack the expertise to tackle the issue leading to donor dependence. MSW management demands multi-stakeholder involvement, which, in turn, depends on multi-ministerial and -departmental coordination, which is chronically deficient. MSW policies, like most other social policies, demand citizen involvement, without which both policy formulation processes and their proper implementation are compromised. Conclusion: In order to overcome these policy challenges, the technical and financial capacity of the stakeholders for MSW management should be enhanced, high-level multi-ministerial coordination needs to be strengthened, and citizen empowerment and engagement must be ensured at every step of the MSW policy cycle.