SPONGE COLLABORATIVE +
WEAVING WITH WATER Team
MULLASSERY CANAL FRAMEWORK AND CANAL EDGE MASTERPLAN
Figure 75: Graphic showing the stakeholders involved, data-set required, and the necessary allied projects for the successful implementation of community layer (Image Credit: Weaving with Water team)
4.2.3.1 Post-implementation Community Waste management Strategies
Figure 76 - Solid waste management strategies are integrated into the frameworks, to effectively rejuvenate the canal (Image Credit: Sponge Collaborative)
A critical factor for the success of any pilot project in the Mullassery Canal precinct is an effective solid waste management strategy, which will facilitate the maintenance and continued success of the project after implementation, and also promote effectiveness of the Sponge and Mobility frameworks by ensuring that water channels and drains remain unclogged and uncontaminated by pollutants and solid waste. This report highlights the critical role of an empowered local community from an overall systems perspective in ensuring the continued success of a solid and sewage waste management strategy along the canal. Detailed site documentation both before and after the EnteKochi urban design competition, as well as conversations with stakeholders have highlighted solid waste management and sewage outfalls as a major issue along the canal edge and in the canal bed. There is empirical evidence from studies on civic participation in Indian cities that solid waste management in particular is an issue that leads communities to greater public cooperation, and hence fosters social bonding and cohesion within a community through the formation of neighbourhood associations, both in terms of organising for collective action as well as taking individual responsibility and behavioural change (Coelho and Venkat, 2009)5. Patchy solid waste management in the context of Kochi has resulted in collective public action against landfill sites in the vicinity of communities with mixed outcomes (Ganesan, 2017)6. Coelho, K. and Venkat, T. (2009) 'The Politics of Civil Society: Neighbourhood Associationism in Chennai', Economic and Political Weekly, 44(26/27), pp. 358-367. Ganesan, P. (2017) 'Landfill sites, solid waste management and people's resistance: a study of two municipal corporations in Kerala', International Journal of Environmental Studies, 74(6), pp. 958-978. 5
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