Waste and Urbanisation: Reconciling Waste with Sustainable Development

This paper's premise is that waste in Haiti is an urbanization problem before it is a sanitation one, and it lays out the urban situation that generates the volumes: uncontrolled extension of the city, a rising number of dwellings, slums fed by rural exodus, and construction on the drainage systems themselves. The dwelling figure it gives is the most concrete link in the chain, since it converts housing growth directly into tonnage: an average of 2.435 tonnes of waste per dwelling built. Construction on drainage systems matters twice over, because the same act that generates waste also removes the channel that would have carried water past it, so blockage and flooding follow from the building boom rather than merely coinciding with it. Presented to the Table Verte of 26 May 2016, a regional coordination forum, it sits alongside companion papers on the national solid-waste policy, the specific situation of Les Cayes, and recycling as an employment sector.