Municipal solid waste governance: development and application of an index embodying the Global South context

Introduction The quality of municipal solid waste governance is a key public issue associated with environmental, social, and health concerns that still demands appropriate indicators to encompass different policy, management, and data availability settings worldwide. This study aimed to develop and apply a Municipal Solid Waste Governance Index (MSWGI) to support the monitoring and assessment of the ultimate factors that influence the performance of municipal solid waste (MSW) management in municipalities, incorporating particularities of Global South countries. Methods The development of the MSWGI comprised two approaches: (1) the establishment of a general theoretical framework with the identification of dimensions for monitoring MSW governance and (2) the development and application of the index using Brazil as a study case. The latter was accomplished through five incremental steps: (i) data selection and data quality analysis, (ii) data normalization and definition of data scores, (iii) data weighting and aggregation through statistical and participatory methods, (iv) data classification and, finally, (v) visualization of the index and its dimensions. Based on a broad literature review, three dimensions were proposed as the framework of the MSWGI: (i) regulatory quality (e.g., laws), (ii) voice and accountability (e.g., access to information; existence and functioning of the municipal council for the environment), and (iii) government effectiveness (e.g., financial and human resources; execution of government programs). A case study was then carried out with the 5,570 Brazilian municipalities to showcase the application and relevance of the MSWGI in a Global South context. Results Despite the high regulatory quality condition in Brazil, this was not reflected in the MSWGI. In general, most municipalities have high (31.4%) and very high (23.7%) regulatory quality, contrasting low voice and accountability (32.4%), and medium government effectiveness (27.8%), the latter associated with the low quality of public services performed in municipalities. The index was also negatively influenced by the precarious mechanisms and structure of social participation; high levels of informality in the recycling sector, and low completeness and consistency of databases. The MSWGI was associated with socioeconomic development, and its concept and dimensions captured the complexities associated with MSW management. Discussion The index, and the approach behind it, can be used as an objective tool to improve databases and the enabling conditions to foster MSW governance and management, while also creating indicators to assess its progress, facing the policy implementation gaps that are common to Global South countries. Also, rather than presenting an index to be directly transposed and applied to other locations, the steps of a strategy for generating an MSWGI from existing data were outlined. In this sense, this study creates mechanisms to refine these indicators within data-deficient context, presenting strategies that can be broadly applied.