Project Objective

Although most cities in Southeast Asia recognize the importance of proper solid waste management (SWM), most city governments are short of staff with technical and management expertise to oversee and carry out improvements to waste management systems. Based on ICSC's successful project in Phuket, Thailand, ICSC undertook a project to help cities to work collaboratively with local governments, community groups and the private sector to address waste management concerns in a sustainable manner. ICSC's role was to facilitate a collaborative process to increase both the project management abilities and the solid waste management expertise available within the Southeast Asian cities.

Partner Cities

ICSC selected six cities for the project, namely Hat Yai and Udon Thani in Thailand, Rantepao and Makale in Indonesia, and Iloilo and Bacolod in The Philippines. Hat Yai and Iloilo had to withdraw early on, but the four other municipalities have seen significant improvements in SWM and in governance.

Key Results

The key results of the project are:

• Strong municipal support in four municipalities for new SWM planning initiatives and initial progress made in the two others.
• Increased managerial and technical capabilities in SWM of the local government and private sector.
• Construction of financially and environmentally sustainable urban infrastructure that will facilitate future urban economic development.
• New awareness of and increased ability to implement multi-stakeholder planning initiatives in all six municipalities.
• Three municipalities have completed SWM masterplans and one more will finalize their plan this year.
• New landfill commissioned in Rantepao/Makale, Indonesia, and Udon Thani, Thailand and upgraded operations in all six project cities.
• Improved living conditions for residents, especially those who are socio-economically disadvantaged (e.g. women wastepickers).
• Improvements to systems for waste for recycling and/or composting in five of six project cities.
• Increased public awareness of and participation in waste minimization and recycling activities.
• Increased private sector involvement in resolving SWM problems.
• Sharing of project lessons learned on a regional basis through an Internet website, printed materials, and a lessons-learned workshop.
• Bacolod and Udon Thani were recognized by their national governments by the winning of the Clean and Green City Award and Lovely and Beautiful City Award respectively.
• Project as a whole was a finalist (Ambassador Project) in the Stockholm Awards and has been selected for site visits by the Global Development Awards.

Stakeholder committee

A key component of the project is the "stakeholder committee". This committee brings together representatives from government, private sector and community groups to identify local priorities for waste management and then to implement practical solutions. Often participants in the process were sceptical at first how they could work together, make decisions, and then carry out practical projects, especially in cities where governments are not used to working with citizen’s groups. ICSC staff worked with the stakeholder groups in a supporting role to facilitate the meetings and ensure that the committees focused on results and set reasonable targets. By involving citizens and local companies at the planning stages, new and creative solutions have been developed which would not have been possible if the government was working independently.

Challenges

The two biggest challenges of the process were:

1. Changes to municipal staff due to elections and reassignment, and
2. Attempts by some members of the community to divert waste management initiatives for personal gain.

The key to dealing with these issues was having a broad–based stakeholder committee structure with an open decision-making process to minimize the impact that any one individual could have on the decision-making and implementation process.

Summary Learning

The most interesting results of this project is in the Lessons Learned section of this site.

Project details

Locations: Udon Thani, Hat Yai (Thailand);

Rantepao and Makale (Indonesia);

Bacolod and Iloilo (The Philippines) 1997-2002

Project Funding: Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Municipal Governments in the respective cities

ICSC Partners: Earth Tech Canada Inc.