Title:

Municipal Waste Management in Namibia: The Windhoek Case Study

Author(s):
Publication Year:
2009
Abstract:

This research attempted to answer the following question: How can Namibia maintain a well-managed system for municipal waste management in future? At the national level, the environment is threatened by unsafe waste disposal, which is detrimental to the environmental integrity and posing health hazards. Waste management is important aspect of environmental management in Namibia, due to the fact that waste is a threat to the integrity of the environment. Waste is among the so called "brown problems", which strongly affects poor people in urban areas. Challenges for managing waste in Namibia are: lack of institutional capacities in some towns to deal with some of the serious waste problems, limited capacity to manage waste and to control pollution, and financial constraints. The disposal of solid and liquid wastes is a concern in Namibia, especially that waste has some implications in sustainable development. Therefore waste management has become a concern for the Namibian government. The study presented herein has investigated the current status of municipal waste management in Namibia, using Windhoek as a case study. Namibian towns, especially Windhoek are challenged by the increasing population, the link between waste and socio-economic development, as well as increasing amounts of waste generated which puts pressure on disposal facilities. At the moment, some town management systems seem to be ineffective in addressing waste management for the purpose of preventing and minimizing waste in order to reduce environmental impacts that may result due to increasing waste volumes. It was deemed necessary to develop a waste management system that could be implemented by 11 all towns. Moreover, sound waste management needs to be encouraged in Namibia.

Publisher:
Universidad Azteca
Type:
Doctorate of Philosophy in Management with specialisation in Environmental Management
Item Type:
Thesis
Language:
en
Files: