Planning for municipal solid waste management : the case of Greater Jos, Nigeria

Abstract

Among the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century is the rapid growth of cities. The growth of most municipalities has remained unplanned and uncontrolled. Unmanageable development in developing countries has given rise to environmental disorders in the built-up settlements. Municipal solid waste management in particular, is now a fear-provoking assignment for the municipal establishments who are lacking in capacity to confront the municipal solid waste issue. The main objective of carrying out this research is to see how urban planning can help improve municipal solid waste issues in Greater Jos municipal area. It defines the municipal solid waste problem and identifies a number of specific planning drivers as the factors responsible for lack of improvement in the municipal solid waste management situation. A mixed method approach was used for the empirical analysis which combined both interviews and questionnaire data from senior government officials, industry stakeholders and residential neighbourhoods, collected with observational and documentary data, in order to investigate the solid waste issue. Major problems identified in this research are: (i) municipalities are undergoing deterioration of solid waste conditions but the local, state and federal governments are lacking adequate planning to deal with the circumstances (ii) apart from quite a lot of causes of the municipal solid wastes crisis can be known, the political commitment to urban planning is lacking which serves as the basis of the deteriorating situation in Nigerian municipalities and (iii) relationship exists between poor planning and municipal solid waste management delivery of collection services and disposal amenities. Individual municipal solid waste management strategy alone was found to produce unplanned and uncoordinated management of waste issues. Collaboration to produce a joint municipal solid waste management plan has been recommended as a good practice.