Understanding Environmental Waste Management As A Wicked Problem: Public Administration Research And Theory

What is a Wicked Problem?

Discuss About The Public Administration Research And Theory.

In the recent times, environmental protection has become the critical issue to deal with. The rapidly increasing pollution is causing severe harm to the various constituents of the ecosystem such as its climate, water, soil, living beings, flora and fauna etc. The major reason behind the intense pollution in the environment is the failure to manage and dispose the wastage resulting from various household as well as business activities. The problem of environmental waste management has nowadays turned to a wicked problem as it is getting difficult to cope with as there is no concrete solution to solve it. The wastage in the environment is causing problems of environment sustainability, global warming and other adverse healthcare problems. Though the environmentalists and policy makers are coming up with different solutions to deal with the concern of waste management in the ecosystem but no action is proving to be sufficient to solve it.

Wickedness is not a degree of the difficulty rather wicked concerns are those issues that cannot be resolved using the traditional processes.  There are innumerable causes of any wicked problem and such causes are hard to be described. Also, wicked problems are complex enough that they don’t have the defined solution. A concern is called as wicked problem when it has adverse cultural and social impact and is difficult or almost impossible to solve due to various reasons such as inadequate or contradictory knowledge, the interconnectedness of the particular with other problems, the involvement of large number of problem or the heavy economic burden (Cooper, 2017).  Solution to the wicket problems could either be good or bad only but not true or false. No idealized end is there to reach at the solutions of these problems hence these problems requires approaches that finds the ways to improve the situation under concern and not the ways to solve it thoroughly. Wicked problems do not demand to follow a prescribed template to deal with them rather they require the continuous efforts as the situation demands. Not all the problems that are difficult to solve can be called as wicked problems instead only those issues that have an indeterminate scope or scale. In the practical world, there are several concerns that represent classic examples of wicked problems such as poverty, gender inequality, terrorism, environmental degradation etc. (Camillus, 2008). In nature, these problems are ordinary but complex enough and thus can be solved through the application of standard approaches. Conventional approaches fail to fix these problems and often worsen the situations by producing undesirable results. To solve a problem that is absolutely wicked in nature, it is necessary to know well the system to which the problem belongs and to understand the complexity of decision making process that will lead to the ultimate solution to the problem (Head & Alford, 2015).

Is waste management a wicked problem?

Due to the rapid industrialization, environmental challenges like waste management, climate changes are increasingly becoming acute in the 21^st century. These are the problems where it gets tough to identify the linkages between their casual factors and hence it is tough to the true problem and determine the exact solution to resolve them (Rayner, 2006). It is generally observed that the households and industries dispose huge of amount of wastages in the open environment due to absence of adequate sewage systems and this causes heavy pollution in the ecosystem (Barr, 2007). Especially the factories produces huge quantum of hazardous wastages both in the liquid, solid and aerial forms (Arena, Mastellone & Perugini, 2003). Despite of stringent policies and control measures from the environment regulators, the industrial and domestic wastage is being dumped on the open lands and discharged into the water bodies rather than adopting the eco-friendly ways to dispose the same. These practices amounts to gross misconduct of the environmental regulations and damages environment severely which ultimately causes serious health hazards to the public at large. Waste management is the concern in which numerous actors are involved and above it, it is also not clear how to completely solve this issue and therefore waste management is recognized as the wicked problem of the environment (Head, 2008). The domestic units consume various vegetables, fruits, and other edible items and their usage requires disposing-off the wastage in the form of plastic bags, vegetable peelings etc. Also, the household units consume water in high quantities for the basic activities and as a result of this water usage they have to discharge the waste or dirty water out of their residential areas. The different sorts of wastages are disposed openly on roads and water bodies that are used by the other constituents of environment and it ultimately cause severe diseases among them. Further, it is also commonly encountered nowadays, that the huge industries lack a proper sewage system to discharge the wastage produced by them in the normal course of their operations. The toxic chemicals and gases from the thermal plants are left to be openly spread in the air, causing heavy air pollution. Since, there are numerous factories set up in the environment, it is difficult to trace the exact amount of wastage discharged by them individually and therefore it becomes harder recognize the true actors of wicked problem of environmental waste-management with the purpose of restricting them to take up the practices and activities that are not at all eco-friendly. Furthermore, there are living beings other than human beings such as plants and trees, animals, insects etc. that produces wastages in considerable amounts and leaves them anywhere on the earth. The wastages in the forms of dry leaves, rotten fruits or vegetables, biological produces cause significant pollution in the atmosphere which leads to increase in the spreadable diseases in the environment. However, it is not practical to compel these creatures to adopt the waste management practices.

The responsibility of managing effectively and adequately the wastage cannot be assigned only to the certain set of individuals rather it must be the responsibility of all the humans surviving in the environment. The best way of managing the wastage is to avoid the excessive wastage. However, there are certain situations when it is practically not possible to prevent the wastage out of various sources such as factories, households, the most effective way to manage the waste is to recycle it as far as possible in those particular circumstances.

In the highly competitive world, businesses executives are merely focused on accomplishing their individual motives of profitability and growth to sustain in the market and in order to achieve these goals and objectives they hardly bother about the impact they are causing to the environment in which they are operating (Liboiron, 2012). However, it is the core responsibility of every business to serve best to the society and environment in which it is operating rather than hurting them critically. To operate the business smoothly and successfully, the managers requires different resources that are available in the environment and when they use such valuable resources of the ecosystem, they are in return, typically responsible to protect the environment. On one side, it is the responsibility of governmental regulators and other authorities to design appropriate and strict policies and control measures to prevent the waste disposal in the open environment that creates intense pollution. It is the responsibility of the workers of the factory working on the thermal plants and other machineries that generates waste produce and the top management to adopt the necessary approaches of waste management so as to protect the overall environment (Van Bueren, Klijn & Koppenjan, 2003).

To deal with the wicked problem of waste management, governance plays an important role. It requires a firm involvement of the public institutions to formulate feasible and necessary solutions and to put them effectively in practice (Sharma & Reddy, 2004). The manufacturing companies in the today’s world of advanced technological development must be encouraged to produce the stuffs that are biodegradable in nature so as to control the disposal of excessive wastage in the eco-system. Further, the individuals and business units must be given awareness sections about the adverse effects of the environmental challenges imposed by the wicked problem waste management (Tunesi, n.d.). The governmental bodies must motivate the industrialists by way of grants and subsidies to adopt the suitable practices of managing the waste produced by them. The factory operators must implement such plants and machineries in the factories that control the quantum of emission of toxic elements in air so as to prevent the air from getting excessively polluted. Also, the industrialists must make use of the sewage treatment plants to avoid the disposal of wastages on the open lands (Mujtaba, 2018).

Conclusion:

From the above report, it can now be summarized that waste management is the typical example of wicked problem that is being faced on the international level nowadays. The concern of waste management has become so critical in the modern world due to the rapid industrialization in the nations and due to this it has become quite difficult to trace out the actual actors of this problem. The wickedness of the issue of environmental waste management in increasing day by day because of involvement of large public in the issue and hence it is hard to restrict each individual to undertake ill-practice of waste-disposal.

References:

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Barr, S., 2007. Factors influencing environmental attitudes and behaviors: A UK case study of household waste management. Environment and behavior, 39(4), pp.435-473.

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Cooper, K. 2017. “Wicked” Problems: what are they, and why are they of interest to NNSI researchers? Available on: < https://nnsi.northwestern.edu/social-impact/nnsi-blogs/wicked-problems-what-are-they-and-why-are-they-of-interest-to-nnsi-researchers/ > Accessed on: 04.07.2018.

Head, B.W. and Alford, J., 2015. Wicked problems: Implications for public policy and management. Administration & Society, 47(6), pp.711-739.

Head, B.W., 2008. Wicked problems in public policy. Public policy, 3(2), p.101.

Liboiron, M. 2012. Trash is a Wicked Problem. Available on: < https://discardstudies.com/2012/12/10/trash-is-a-wicked-problem/> Accessed on: 04.07.2018.

Mujtaba, M. 2018. Are we facing wicked problems? Available on: < https://nation.com.pk/22-Jan-2018/are-we-facing-wicked-problems > Accessed on: 04.07.2018.

Rayner, S., 2006.Wicked Problems: Clumsy Solutions – diagnoses and prescriptions for environmental ills. Available on: < file:///C:/Users/System04091/Downloads/2406939_1147109554_SteveRayner2CJackBealeLectureW.pdf> Accessed on: 04.07.2018.

Sharma, H.D. and Reddy, K.R., 2004. Geoenvironmental engineering: site remediation, waste containment, and emerging waste management technologies. John Wiley & Sons, Inc..

Tunesi, S. n.d. Waste Management. Available on: < https://www.riskandsolutions.eu/waste_management_tunesi/> Accessed on: 04.07.2018.

Van Bueren, E.M., Klijn, E.H. and Koppenjan, J.F., 2003. Dealing with wicked problems in networks: Analyzing an environmental debate from a network perspective. Journal of public administration research and theory, 13(2), pp.193-212.