Pro-Poor Solid Waste Management

MarijkHuysman bases her lecture on the importance of accessible and effective urban waste collection services for public health, environmental conditions, productivity and aesthetics of cities. Yet evidence shows that waste services are often failing poor people. She argues that long before the concept of green growth was embraced as an urban development trend, informal waste workers have made a significant economic and environmental contribution to urban centers and also provides a source of income for millions of people worldwide.MarijkHuysman is a senior academic staff at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), an international educational institute under the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Within the IHS she coordinates the Urban Environmental Management Department. She is an urban sociologist specialized in integrated solid waste management and environmental planning and management who has been engaged in EPM and in the world of waste for over 25 years. Starting in the 1980’s with a research on waste picker communities in the city of Bangalore (India) and the coordination of a research project on linkages between formal and informal SWM systems in three Indian cities, she has been intensively involved in research and advisory work related to pro-poor waste management approaches.