Bottom-up approach to sustainable waste management: Case Studies form Laos

From Dr Chuthatip Maneepong case studies of community based waste management projects from Laos presented in Week 6 Lecture, money and leadership from the government, International Development Agencies, and Community are the major factors in a successful bottom-up approach. The success of the efforts in Nong Duang Thong Village (Inner City Slum) is due to the network of leadership between CIDA that help establish a legitimate contract for the Village, Village Leader watches over the Community Environment Units to facilitate actions in the community, and Community Environment Units to support Villagers in their efforts. Money also played a key role in that it gave facilities and incentives for the community members to participate in waste management of sorting and recycling. Such as, allowing villagers to make revenue from selling recycled goods, making the project a sustainable practice. With leadership, I believe there needs to be a chain of leadership to support one another.  In the example of Sisatanak, the community project failed because there were no further actions on the project after it was implemented due to lack of leadership and funding. The project was administrated by a villager nominated by the village head, and had no support from the government or international agencies. With low funding and resources, the sole villager did not have the capacity to motivate the others. With no authoritative figure, it was difficult for a villager to have credibility to influence others in supporting the project. In addition, there was no prior established leadership in the community making it hard for the villager to reach out to a fragmented community.

After learning from these case studies, I questioned if a bottom-up approach of waste management is appropriate to all communities? From my perspective, I believe in a lower income community, the approach is viable because profit can be generated from recycling efforts in improving their quality of living. However, in middle class income communities and above, a top-down approach would work better. This is because they are more reliant on the municipal government to deal with the collecting and processing of their waste. As culturally, recycling efforts are regarded as activities of the poor and they would be less engaged in community waste management projects.