The ethics of working with wicked urban waste problems: The case of Singapore’s Semakau Landfill

Abstract

Despite alarming predictions that global waste will nearly double to 2.2 billion annual tonnes by 2025, and despite the recognition that waste consumes space, the wicked problem of waste as well as its negative impacts have yet to be systematically examined in planning and environmental design. In urban waste management, the landfill is at once the most visible and spatial sign of this worsening problem. In this article, I examine the case of Singapore’s offshore Semakau Landfill as an attempt in large-scale environmental modification—the creation of new land or terra nova in the sea—to accommodate waste. As an unprecedented case of environmental design for urban waste, this case brings up various ethical issues encountered in the framing, ‘taming’, and ‘solution’ of this wicked problem. Through this article, I respond to the call for greater insights and knowledge on working with wicked problem in socio-ecological systems today. I explain why ethics is necessary for a better understanding of the wicked problem of waste, which entails not only different adaptive strategies, but also commitments to large-scale environmental design projects. Because wicked problems often demand ‘tragic solutions’ that imply harm, I also apply different ethical frameworks to understand the implications of the Semakau Landfill as a ‘tragic solution’. In all, I argue that the contemporary problem of waste is a wicked problem and how an ethical understanding of this problem can help to avoid the various moral pitfalls of this wicked problem.