City stories: Strengthening partnerships with informal workers to deliver a just transition
C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Nordic Sustainability, junio 2023
In cities across Asia, the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, workers in the informal waste management sector play a vital, yet often underestimated, role.
Experiences in Accra, Rio de Janeiro and Lagos show that integrating them into strong partnerships enables local authorities to create millions of green jobs, significantly increase recycling rates, make progress towards the ‘zero waste’ target and achieve a just, inclusive transition.
This paper draws on these lessons learnt to propose concrete measures and tailored policy recommendations for cities. A roadmap for transforming these informal workers into strategic partners for more sustainable and inclusive urban development.
In cities across Asia, the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, workers in the informal waste management sector play a vital role in this field. Establishing strong, collaborative partnerships with this sector offers cities the opportunity to create millions of high-quality green jobs1, increase recycling rates2, make progress towards the ‘zero waste’3 goal and achieve a just transition4 that leaves no one behind.
This report is aimed at cities wishing to establish and strengthen partnerships with the informal waste management sector. It sets out concrete measures that cities can implement, as well as policy recommendations and case studies focusing on the cities of Accra, Rio de Janeiro and Lagos. The report identifies three areas for action for cities and sets out detailed policy recommendations for each of them. A selection of these recommendations is summarised below :
Ensuring that all stakeholders recognise the contribution of informal sector workers
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Use legislative and executive powers to embed recognition of the rights and contributions of informal sector workers into local policies.
Example : Accra’s resilience strategy recognises and accounts for informal sector workers
The third pillar of the Accra City Resilience Strategy highlights the important role of the informal sector, which offers opportunities and lessons in urban resilience and livelihoods. It sets out a roadmap for the city to support and recognise the sector’s ongoing contribution to building resilience. It makes clear that, if properly understood and managed, informal systems can help to increase inclusion and strengthen the performance of the formal sector. Building on this framework, the needs assessment carried out by the City of Accra played a key role in developing a new policy framework to guide collaboration between the city and workers in the informal sector.
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Utilise national data and sector-specific expertise to map the contributions of informal sector workers throughout the value chain. This requires collecting data on the activities of informal workers in the waste sector, disaggregated by gender, age and migration status, to enable the implementation of inclusive and gender-sensitive policies.
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Help workers to register and obtain local identity documents that can facilitate their access to social security and other basic services. This is an important step towards recognising the rights of workers in the informal sector, as it opens up access to essential services. One example is the use of professional identity cards, which recognise waste collection as a legitimate profession and often guarantee certain rights to the holder, such as legal ownership of the waste.
Providing skills and livelihood-building opportunities for workers in the informal sector
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Encourage the creation of businesses, co-operatives and trade unions by simplifying registration procedures and making them more accessible. Cities can simplify these procedures and introduce temporary local tax exemptions or grants to help waste pickers and processors in the informal sector register as official businesses.
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Use legal, fiscal and sector-specific incentives to encourage the establishment of tailored and flexible contractual arrangements, as well as inclusive workplace practices. Cities can encourage the use of flexible agreements and contracts between stakeholders, waste pickers and their communities, thereby enabling waste pickers to access jobs, essential services and official recognition. This can improve informal sector workers’ access to social and financial capital, the stability of their incomes and their recognition in the workplace.
Improving working conditions through better infrastructure and equipment
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Harness sector-specific expertise to establish decentralised infrastructure designed to support services for informal sector workers in hard-to-reach areas of the city. This may include storage and sorting facilities, transfer stations or neighbourhood collection and sorting centres. This will greatly help informal sector workers to store, sort and sell their materials without having to carry heavy loads for kilometres, often on foot along busy roads with little space for pedestrians.
Example : Community recycling centres in Lagos create jobs for informal sector workers in waste management
The City of Lagos plans to establish 104 community recycling centres, which will also serve as information centres focused on empowering women and young people. The city plans to set up two centres per local council development zone, creating up to 20 jobs per centre.
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Rely on the involvement of residents and the private sector to improve waste sorting at source. Cities can encourage residents and the private sector to get involved in improving waste sorting at source using simple materials such as stickers, magnets, different coloured bins and illustrations, as well as through face-to-face training in people’s homes, community meetings, online guides, educational videos, leaflets, sorting games, radio announcements, TV adverts, press articles, social media posts, training sessions for schoolchildren, etc.
The video below summarises some of the key measures taken in Lagos, Accra and Rio de Janeiro, as described in the report.
1 Good green jobs: How to ensure an equitable, just transition for workers
2 How cities can boost recycling rates
3 Why cities need to advance towards zero waste
4 Achieving the just transition: A toolkit for city leaders across the globe
Referencias
Online document: City stories: Strengthening partnerships with informal workers to deliver a just transition
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To find out more about strengthening relationships with workers in the informal sector in your town, see our implementation guide How to support informal sector workers and informal economies as part of a just transition.
Website: www.c40.org/