ABSTRACT
Waste appears as a blurred notion, both as an object and as a basic service. Defined as something thrown away, waste is something that no longer belongs to anyone. Moreover, the type of economic service that municipal solid waste management (SWM) constitutes is not clear: Is it a public service or a commercial activity? Because of that indefinite situation, the SWM “modernisation” process in the Global South generates clashes between agents. Such appropriation conflicts arise because waste is no longer seen only as a nuisance, but also, increasingly, as a valuable resource. In order to go beyond an ineffective trash/resource dichotomy, based on empirical work in Brazil and India, this chapter proposes to consider urban solid waste as a Common Pool Resource (CPR). Such a perspective could lead to semi-decentralized SWM systems, in which informal recovery agents would be incorporated as local players rather than fought against. Coupled with use rights (rather than property rights), the idea of urban waste as urban commons may help us re-imagine urban policies beyond the state/market dichotomy that appears today as a structural axis of expropriation dynamics, especially in the Global South.
