Thesis summary
Social inequalities in the management of the urban environment have become more pronounced in the developing world, including sub-Saharan Africa. Confronted with an increasing production of solid waste and pollution, most African cities have been experiencing changes in governance systems over the last few decades, increasingly engaging the private sector for urban cleanliness services. This thesis thus seeks to understand how urban environmental inequalities are produced around the collection, transport, and disposal of solid waste under a public-private partnership. To address the key question, this research draws upon a number of theoretical and methodological approaches related to issues of urban inequality and environmental justice, inspired by the broader field of urban political ecology. It examines factors relating to environmental inequalities through the relations of power and politics between institutions and waste stakeholders. More specifically, this thesis analyses the causes of the uneven urban cleanliness service in the planned and unplanned areas of Bafoussam, a medium-sized city and the regional capital of western Cameroon.
Quantitative and especially qualitative methods, including participant observation, were used to study urban society, public and private authorities and assess daily practices of a complexity of actors within formal and informal sectors in their respective itineraries and urban spaces around both disputed and rejected resource. The empirical papers are based on eight months of fieldwork carried out in Bafoussam city between 2014 and 2016 with various stakeholders in the waste management chain, especially the private company Hysacam (Hygiene and Sanitation of Cameroon). Our results indicate that the waste circuits, from the point of production to the depositing at the landfill, reflect various forms of inequalities related to the
access to urban cleanliness service, collection practices and the pollution exposures near the municipal landfill. These inequalities occur within the process of urbanization and urban fragmentation along socio-economic, institutional and political lines. The environmental inequalities in Bafoussam involve numerous actors of the waste (management change) and are peacefully fought by poor urban citizens settled near the municipal dumpsite.
The thesis argues that the public-private partnership in Bafoussam is no panacea for municipal solid waste management and for the improvement of urban environment quality. However, the analysis reveals the process and the moments of the production of environmental inequalities associated with municipal solid waste service in urban areas.