The Social and Ecological Dimensions of a Decentralisation Process: Participation by Social Movements in the Sustainable Management of Urban Solid Waste in Buenos Aires

CECILIA CROSS; ADA FREYTES FREY

Decentralisation Meets Local Complexity: Local Struggles, State Decentralisation and Access to Natural Resources in South Asia and Latin America

Geographia Bernesia

Lugar: Berna, Suiza; Año: 2009; p. 93 - 125

This paper analyses the governance dynamics involved in a decentralisation policy aiming to tackle the environmental, economic and social problems linked to waste treatment in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires City. The ‘Sin Desperdicios’ programme intends to generate a ‘social model’ for waste management, by encouraging productive networks that include municipalities and social organisations. These networks will manage social plants for solid waste selection and classification. We focus on the process of negotiation related to the setting of one of these social plants. This process was led by a social movement that organised the population living near Buenos Aires’ main sanitary filling. Since this particular project concerns a multiplicity of heterogeneous actors, it is of strategic significance to analyse the complex processes of interaction involved in democratic decentralisation policies. The hypothesis we explore here is that the actual impact of these decentralisation policies depends on the outcome of the conflicts and negotiations between actors’ different logics. In order to assess the consequences of such policies on livelihoods, government legitimacy and waste management, we explore the governance processes that inform their design and implementation. To this effect, we first discuss the relationship between decentralisation and governance. Then, departing from the analytical framework of governance, we shed some light on the logic of actors’ decisions and action and the social dynamics involved in this process of decentralisation.