The Political Ecology of Informal Waste Recyclers in India

Description

Waste is increasingly a site of social conflict. The questions related to waste management are not merely technical; what, how, where, and by whom become intrinsically political questions. This book is about the power relations in recycling, from the viewpoint of political ecology and ecological economics. Informal waste recyclers are invisible for citizens and public policy. This book focuses on environmental conflicts involving them, with two emblematic case studies from India. Firstly, ship breaking, where the metabolism of a global infrastructure, namely shipping, shifts social and environmental costs to very localized communities in order to obtain large profits. Secondly, the conflict around municipal solid waste management in Delhi shows how environmental costs are shifted to urban residents, and recyclers are dispossessed of their livelihood source: recyclable waste. The first is an example of capital accumulation by contamination, while the second involves both dispossession and contamination. The struggles of informal recyclers constitute an attempt to re-politicize waste metabolism beyond techno-managerial solutions by fostering counter-hegemonic discourses and praxis. The book presents a range of experiences, mostly in India but with examples from all over the world, to inform theory on how environments are shaped, politicized, and contested.

About the author:

Federico Demaria is an Associate Professor in Ecological Economics and Political Ecology at the University of Barcelona, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona. His research aims to inform theory on how environments are shaped, politicized, and contested. He is an editor of the journal Sustainability Science, and a member of the editorial board of Ecological Economics. He is also an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has been a visiting scholar at research centres in India, China, USA, UK, Netherlands, Croatia, Germany, and Italy. He is the co-editor of Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (2014) and Pluriverse: A Post-development Dictionary (2019), and a co-author of The Case for Degrowth (2020).

Reviews

‘Federico Demaria has given us a gem of a book. . . . it is the kind of book to which the reader tends to return to because yet another element suddenly is in play. It is partly the complexity of the conditions he has engaged and the vastness of the elements in play. It is the type of book that helps us learn something we had not considered or thought about. His analysis covers a large variety of elements, from environmental conflicts to giving voice and presence to the poor and forgotten. It is a must-read’.—Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, New York, and author of Expulsions

‘Demaria makes a timely and important contribution to political ecology, demonstrating that neither the political economy nor materiality can be considered as “context” since they are always already co-constituted. The book’s rich analysis exposes how the politics around social metabolism is intrinsically linked to the struggle against exploitation, dispossession, and contamination’.—Maria Kaika, University of Amsterdam, author of City of flows: Modernity, nature, and the city and co-editor of Turning up the Heat: Urban Political Ecology for a Climate Emergency, with Keil, Mandler and Tzaninis

‘This book delves deeply into unseen aspects of poverty in India, discusses the environmentalism of the poor, and clarifies the debates on the so-called circular economy. We know that the industrial economy is entropic. This book is a major contribution to research on the economy of the Entropocene’.—Joan Martinez Alier, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and author of Environmentalism of the Poor

‘Based on more than ten years of field experience and two case studies in India, Federico Demaria provides a perceptive and compelling exploration of the power relations at the heart of recycling in the global South. His detailed discussion of the conflicts that exist in the recycling sector, both locally and globally, not only highlights social, political, and institutional dynamics but sensitively tells the story of informal recyclers, or waste pickers, whom he identifies as important environmental workers. Ultimately, Demaria makes an impassioned plea for a fair and just evaluation of the contribution made by waste pickers who stand at the front line of climate change resilience.’—Libby McDonald, Lecturer and Inclusive Economies Lead; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, D-Lab

‘How can we “repoliticize waste metabolism beyond techno-managerial solutions”? What are the global and urban “social relations of recycling”? What are the key concepts to understand the recycling scape and the processes of dispossession waste pickers are subject to? Under what conditions can informal waste pickers be meaningfully engaged in complex systems such as circular and green economies? We need to critically engage with the debates on sustainability, alternative models for the economy, and development and explore in depth the room for waste pickers inclusion in such systems—and this is what precisely the book The Political Ecology of Informal Waste Recyclers in India: Circular Economy, Green Jobs, and Poverty does. Drawing from many cases but particularly from the Delhi waste conflict around privatization of waste and introduction of incineration, the book traces back the struggles of workers and allies and makes a powerful call for the recognition of the crucial role informal waste workers make to the environment and the economy. The book makes a critical contribution to the growing knowledge of waste pickers by studying not only through a poignant narrative of conflicts and struggles but also by introducing key concepts for understanding the threats and the struggles for resistance. As Paulo Freire said: “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other”’.—Sonia Dias, Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)

Table of contents

1. Introduction: Waste Is Increasingly a Site of Social Conflict
2. Theoretical Framework: Ecological Economics, Political Ecology, and Waste Studies
3. Shipbreaking in Alang: A Conflict Against Capital Accumulation by Contamination
4. Delhi’s Waste Conflict: An Unlikely Alliance Against Capital Accumulation by Dispossession and Contamination
5. Informal Waste Recyclers and Their Environmental Services: A Case for Recognition and Capital De- Accumulation
6. Conclusions: How Environments Are Shaped, Politicized, and Contested