Repercussions of Improved Municipal Solid Waste Management on Flood Risk Reduction: The Case of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Abstract

Indisputably, flooding is one of the predicaments that have plagued many countries throughout the world. Consequently, Improvement of Municipal Solid Waste Management-(MSWM) has recently become one of the ways that is believed to help in reducing the impact of flooding. Following the fact that Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital, has nearly 5 million inhabitants and several of the wards are in flood-prone areas, the City authorities introduced new models of MSWM by incorporating public-private partnership as a deliberate action envisioned to improve MSWM. Nevertheless, the extent to which the strategy is effective in minimizing flood risks had not been adequately researched, which prompted a need to conduct a study. Specifically, the study sought to: assess the current practice of SWM in the settlement; examine the extent to which flood risk had been reduced given the application of the new models of SWM. This is primarily a case study which used Keko Machungwa in Dar es Salaam as the study area. Different forms of data collections tools were used for instance interviews of households and officials, photographs, spatial data etc. The findings indicated that Jukwaa la Wanawake in Keko Machungwa, a newly emerged community-driven organization was doing a fairly good job in handling SWM. This social entity was capable of collecting 40 tons of solid wastes per week and arranged for transportation. Overall, there was a marked decrease in haphazard dumping within the settlement. Despite the improvement, however, flooding was still persistent and was an alarming challenge. To that effect, this study recommends that improving solid waste collection could help overcome the problem of flooding particularly if integrated with other initiatives which include 1) Investment in robust flood control structures; 2) Adherence to Urban planning and disaster management policies which prohibit development in hazardous areas, an instance of which being demolishing the existing building structures located in the water way in Keko Machungwa and; 3) Initiate large scale flood risk reduction settlement schemes.