Solid waste management and social inclusion of waste pickers: opportunities and challenges

This repository item contains a working paper from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment.In this paper we explore the opportunities and challenges inherent in the model of cooperation between municipal solid waste systems (MWSs) and waste picker cooperatives (WPCs). There is growing enthusiasm about waste picker inclusion, often as part of ‘integrated solid waste management.’ The World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank, for example, have both funded projects to support waste picker integration into formal sector recycling. Advocacy organizations such as WIEGO have called for an intensification of such efforts through access to credit and technology, as well as through partnerships to collect recyclables in underserved communities. These measures have given many waste pickers higher standards of living, economic security and a sense of inclusion in society. [TRUNCATED

Latin America 2060: consolidation or crisis?

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.Latin America has produced vigorous ideas throughout its history, expressed in narratives about its struggles and successes, or its weaknesses and failures. Together, these have shaped a multi-faceted vision of the region and its peoples. Some of its expositors, finding the story to be neither complete nor precise, work toward reformulations, some quite radical. Such generation of knowledge in different fields seems destined to yield a variety of distinct outcomes, at least in part because some of the emerging social and cultural movements are not yet very well structured. This Task Force Report project seeks to harness ideas about the region’s future into a coherent and policy useful discourse. A Workshop and a Task Force meeting was held at Boston University on November 18-19, 2010. A select group of invited experts – a mix of academic scholars and practitioners – were asked to turn their ideas into short ‘Think Pieces’ essays. Each Think Piece focuses on a specific topical issue for the region as a whole, instead of looking only at particular countries. These Think Piece essays are compiled and edited by the Task Force coordinator and published by the Pardee Center as a Task Force Report

Declining Poverty in Latin America? A Critical Analysis of New Estimates by International Institutions

Indicators of progress in overcoming poverty in Latin America have been heralded recently by international institutions. Yet a closer look at data from the World Bank and the United Nations reveals contradictions that are not easily resolved by reference to the underlying methodologies. This paper provides an introduction to how poverty is measured, what the data indicate about trends in poverty, and reasons to tread cautiously in interpreting it as evidence of progress or stagnation. While significant progress has been achieved in a few large countries, the poorest countries are still very poor, and some countries have even seen increases in their poverty rates despite economic growth