National Solid Waste Policy in Haiti

Solid waste is one of the few urban services in Haiti where the gap between national policy and municipal capacity is visible in a single glance down any street, and this presentation is an attempt to set out what a national policy would contain. It was delivered by Joaneson Lacour, PhD, to the Table Régionale de Coordination pour le Grand Sud meeting at Port-Salut on 26 May 2016, and the epigraph it opens with is a deliberate framing choice: a quotation from Laura Weber, a US director of solid waste management, describing waste management as an evolving program in which planners try one strategy and, if unsuccessful, change and try another. That is an argument against treating a waste policy as a fixed plan to be implemented, and for treating it as an adaptive administrative practice. The document belongs to a coordinated set from the same session, alongside CIAT papers on the link between waste and urbanization, the particular failure of collection in Les Cayes, and recycling as a source of employment.