Throwing Development in the Garbage: A Deconstructive Ethic for Waste Sector Development in Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

The WM sector in Nairobi is a failure. Collection rates are deplorable, regulations go unenforced and the municipal landfill is desecrating the environment and killing neighbouring slum dwellers. This paper focuses on the exclusion and marginalization of the slums adjacent to Nairobi’s landfill, Korogocho and Dandora, and uses a post-structuralist theoretical framework to conceptualize a just response to these exclusions and theorize an inclusive approach to waste policy in Nairobi. Building on the work of Jacques Derrida, I present a ‘deconstructive ethic’ for development that is dedicated to mitigating and overcoming the production of alterity, and reintegrating excluded communities and knowledges into the sites of knowledge and policy creation. This ethic is used to formulate a five-part response to the conditions of exclusion experienced in Korogocho and Dandora, and to engage these populations in finding participatory solutions to the city’s waste problem.