Group assessment of key indicators of sustainable waste management in developing countries

Abstract

Decision makers in developing countries are struggling to solve the present problems of solid waste management. Prioritisation and ranking of the most important indicators that influence the waste management system is very useful for any decision maker for the future planning and implementation of a sustainable waste management system. The aim of this study is to evaluate key indicators and their related sub-indicators in a group decision-making environment. In order to gain insight into the subject it was necessary to obtain the qualified opinions of decision makers from different countries who understand the situation in the sector of waste management in developing countries. An assessment is performed by 43 decision makers from both developed and developing countries, and the applied methodology is based on a combined use of the analytic hierarchy process, from the multi-criteria decision-making set of tools, and the preferential voting method known as Borda Count, which belongs to social choice theory. Pairwise comparison of indicators is performed with the analytic hierarchy process, and the ranking of indicators once obtained is assessed with Borda Count. Detailed analysis of the final results showed that the Institutional-Administrative indicator was the most important one, with the maximum weight as derived by both groups of decision makers. The results also showed that the combined use of the analytic hierarchy process and Borda Count contributes to the credibility and objectivity of the decision-making process, allowing its use in more complex waste management group decision-making problems to be recommended.

Evidence-based pathway for solid waste modernisation and sustainability in Ghana

“…They identified the lack of solid waste management plans and legislative frameworks, the absence of inclusive governance strategies, weak institutions, and weak human resource capacities, as the core factors affecting the poor performance of the city in collection coverage, controlled disposal and recycling. These findings are supported by earlier research on developing countries in which governance and administrative issues have been observed to be major contributors to system failure (Ali, 2010;Asase et al, 2009;Bhuiyan, 2010;Bundhoo, 2018;Ezeah and Roberts, 2012;Henry et al, 2006;Tot et al, 2017;Wilson et al, 2012;Wilson et al, 2013). The difference in Accra was that, the working group, after nine months of field visits, meetings and discussions, came to these conclusions themselves, based on their increasing understanding of the mix and extent of governance issues affecting system modernisation.…”

“…• political unwillingness of decision-makers to take structural measures for improvement, complicated by the tendency to wait for crises and then to look for overnight solutions to fix the system (Oteng-Ababio et al, 2013; Ali, 2010) • absence of a consistent and realistic strategic policy and regulatory framework for implementation of waste management system improvements • vulnerability of political authorities to accept "donations" of unsustainable technologies from developed countries without knowing what operating costs they are committing to, and in general without analysing their usefulness given the characteristics and composition of local solid waste streams (Ali, 2010; • lack (or absence) of commitment to charge for the real cost of SWM (even when there is evidence of users' ability to pay) to effectively fund the system, and the related overdependence on donor financial support for both capital and recurrent investments (Ali, 2010) • financial constraints and underfunded infrastructure (Ezeah and Roberts, 2012) • chronic lack of data to plan and develop locally appropriate and long-term interventions (Oduro-Appiah et al, 2017a; UNEP, 2018) • lack of sustained research into locally responsive treatment options Marshall and Farahbakhsh, 2013) • weak and limited human resource capacity, especially in the SWM and sanitation sectors (Bundhoo, 2018;Wilson et al, 2013) It is clear, that these observations and the evidence from the WasteAware benchmark indicators (Table 6.1) show that governance, administrative and institutional constraints prevail as recurring nemesis to sustainable SWM systems delivery in Ghana and other developing countries (Wilson, 2007;Wilson et al, 2013;Tot et al, 2017). Finding an evidence-based path to addressing these governance-related challenges is an urgent priority, and one which is highly relevant to Ghana (Wilson et al, 2017).…”

Análise bibliométrica das tendências de pesquisas sobre indicadores aplicados à gestão de resíduos sólidos urbanos no período de 2010 a 2021

“…O periódico Waste Management & Research apresentou o maior número de artigos científicos publicados sobre o tema, perfazendo um total de oito trabalhos (16%). Essas pesquisas abordam a avaliação dos indicadores (Tot et al, 2017) e também sua aplicação por meio de estudos de casos em países da África (Kabera;Wilson;Nishimwe, 2019;Oduro-Appiah et al, 2017), da América do Sul (Ferronato et al, 2018;Juca et al, 2020), da Ásia Central (Sim et al, 2013) e da Europa (Milutinovic et al, 2016;Stanisavljevic et al, 2015).…”

Evaluated Post-Disaster and Emergency Assembly Areas Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Techniques: A Case Study of Turkey

“…The BORDA Counting method is a voting system that assigns points to each candidate based on their rank in each voter's preference list, with the winner being the candidate with the highest total score [57]. The BORDA Counting method is widely used in a variety of applications, including electoral systems, wine quality ranking, and waste management [57][58][59]. This method can also be used to reduce the amount of manipulation in group decisions [60].…”