Natural disasters and urban services: the case of waste management
Understanding the role of disaster victims in post-disaster waste management.
Context, humanitarian and social issues and challenges
Natural disasters affect access to essential urban services: drinking water and sanitation, health, energy, transport, communication and waste management. Post-disaster waste management issues have received little attention. However, disasters generate large quantities of waste which, if poorly managed, can have major environmental and health impacts: pollution of the natural environment (water, soil and air), spread of disease through the development of viruses or moulds, and so on. In addition, waste management services are severely disrupted by the accumulation, mixing and dispersal of waste, saturation of emergency resources and damage to transport and communication networks. In response to these disruptions, the service needs to be reorganised, involving a wide range of actors, including crisis management, environmental and civil protection associations, and the affected populations.
The aim of the research is to study the impact of the deterioration of waste management services after a disaster on the affected population. The research is guided by two main questions: 1) how acceptable is the deterioration of the waste management service in the affected areas? and 2) how can local people intervene in post-disaster waste management to compensate for the difficulties of the deteriorated public service?
Scope and methodology
The project focuses on hurricanes on the island of Marie-Galante (Guadeloupe). The island’s double insularity (in relation to Guadeloupe) accentuates the need for the local population to act on its own, due to the difficulty of evacuating waste on the one hand, and obtaining additional resources (human and technical) on the other. Interviews are being conducted with local actors in the field of post-disaster waste management, and crisis management exercises are being carried out with the population in high-risk areas.
The scientific interest of the research and for humanitarian and social actors
This research contributes to raising awareness of the issue and problems of post-disaster waste management among civil protection actors, who are generally involved in post-disaster waste management, as well as city councils, which are the first local institutional responders in the event of a disaster.
At the local level, crisis management exercises are used to raise awareness among the population in the area under study. The results can be used to demonstrate the value of such exercises for people living in high-risk areas.
The project focuses on the critical issue of post-disaster waste, which has been little studied in French research.
In addition to the results on post-disaster waste, this project will make it possible to
1) To test the use of a functional analysis method to develop disaster scenarios and, in the long term, to challenge planning;
2) To highlight the links between technical networks, public services and crisis management;
3) To take an interest in the adaptive capacity of populations affected by natural disasters, from the point of view of how disaster-affected populations take over public services;
4) To observe the usefulness of crisis management exercises (generally carried out by operational actors) for the population.
Biography
Gaïa Marchesini’s research focuses on the adaptation of cities and urban socio-technical systems to climate change. After obtaining an engineering degree in water and the environment at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, she completed her PhD at the Gustave Eiffel University on the reorganisation of the waste management system after a natural disaster. She worked on the quantification of water-related disasters and on local responsibilities for waste management planning in the event of a disaster. Finally, this research project, funded by the Red Cross Foundation, allows her to pursue the questions raised in her thesis by focusing on an aspect that has not been much studied to date: the role of disaster victims in post-disaster waste management.