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Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) principles have emerged as the template for e-waste policies, centered on establishing regulated collection and recycling channels. Originating in the global North, these policies are increasingly adopted in the global South where e-waste is primarily 'managed' by the informal sector, centered in spatially defined hubs. These formal systems fail to achieve collection quotas, while further marginalizing informal recyclers by delegitimizing their access to e-waste. We suggest an alternative hub-centered approach to e-waste reform based on eight years of research and advocacy within the Israel-West Bank e-waste system. We offer several converging rationales for centralizing hubs in e-waste policies and a case study demonstrating an integrated hub-driven package of business, enforcement, and cleanup measures. While the unique complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian case offer an exceptional window into the dynamics of a hub-driven approach, similar packages might shape e-waste policy reform throughout the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation: The public needs to be better informed on the reasons for providing aid, especially that which supports the Sustainable Development Goals. How aid is framed by donors directly affects levels of public support. Purpose: The article investigates support for aid among English‐speaking Canadians, and how this varies by the framing of aid spending, socioeconomic markers, personal values and political engagement. Approach and methods: Statistical analysis is undertaken of data from a representative survey of English‐speaking Canadians on their knowledge and attitudes with respect to aid to developing countries. A particular focus of the analysis is the influence of the framing of aid spending on public support for aid spending, while controlling for the influence of socioeconomic factors. Findings: Support for increased spending rises when spending is framed relative to the size of the economy, whether in dollar or percentage terms, rather than when framed relative to government taxation or spending. Providing information on the current level of aid spending also raises support for increased aid spending. Overall, when informed about the level of aid spending, most respondents support maintaining or increasing aid. Views on aid vary little by age, education and other socioeconomic markers. People's values, however, did affect support for aid. Respondents who believe in "Canada first" were considerably more likely to support aid cuts than others. Those who see kindness as part of Canadian identity tend to favour aid, while those who see economic prosperity as part of national identity tend to want aid cuts. While voting intention does not affect views on aid, respondents who have been either politically active or involved in collective action on media/social media are a little more likely to favour increased aid. Policy implications: The findings confirm the importance of the framing of aid spending for designing and implementing programmes to inform, engage and elicit support from the public. Given how values influence public support for aid, engagement needs to be tailored to different target audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic waste (e-waste) policies have traditionally been based on extended producer responsibility (EPR) principles. In practice, EPR-based e-waste policies primarily involve the creation of regulated collection and recycling channels, with success tied to achieving high collection quotas. However, the majority of EPR programs, particularly those in the Global South, have achieved little success due to competition with the informal sector. Despite this, strikingly little is known of the scope and dynamics of informal ewaste flows and actors during the formulation of e-waste management policies. This study develops and pilots a replicable three-stage model for solid waste researchers, practitioners and policymakers to rapidly assess these informal e-waste systems. This model is demonstrated in Cuenca, Ecuador, and determined the destination of 50-80% of Cuenca's e-waste over a period of three days. The methods used and findings that emerge from this study offer a strategy to rapidly quantify and understand the dynamics of informal ewaste systems to inform EPR-based policies in ways that place informal recyclers at the core of e-waste management. This not only provides creative opportunities for formal systems to achieve e-waste collection quotas through partnerships with the informal sector, but offers a pathway to preserve the livelihoods of marginalized populations reliant on e-waste recycling and decrease environmental harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faith-based development organizations (FBOs) have been argued to deliver more cost-efficient development projects than their secular counterparts through exclusive access to faith networks, which provide predictable decentralized funding, the recruitment of volunteers, low employee salaries, and less overhead and indirect costs. To date, however, comparative analyses of religious and secular organizations have relied on a case-by-case approach, limiting the generalizability of findings. This study addresses this methodological gap by analyzing Registered Charity Information Return filings and organizational websites of 844 Canadian development NGOs to determine the proportion of FBOs and their organizational distinctiveness. The results show that FBOs comprise 40% of the Canadian NGO sector in terms of the number of organizations and their expenditures in developing countries, and are significantly less reliant on federal funding (p <.1), pay employees lower salaries (p <.01), but do not exhibit a significant difference in their expenditures on overhead and indirect costs. Thus, Canadian FBOs participation in faith networks shapes their organizational modus operandi but does not result in a low overhead alternative to secular NGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes an unconventional participatory development approach carried out in an informal e‐waste hub in South‐West Hebron, an area that has collected and processed the bulk of Israeli e‐waste for over a decade. Our approach contributes to the critique and recovery of community representation in participatory development and the search for ways to facilitate representative community engagement. Specifically, we describe our use of a novel Delphi‐like method that allowed us to facilitate a broadly endorsed development trajectory within a heterogeneous and conflicted community. We show how the results yielded by this approach diverged from those that were likely to emerge from more facile forms of participation in ways that are important for other similar e‐waste hubs internationally, which face a destructive status quo on the one hand, or the economically ruinous international policies that ban e‐waste trade from "developed" to "developing" countries on the other. Despite real tensions and cleavages within the affected communities, the process described facilitated a shift from deadlocked environmental versus livelihood positions towards building capacity and regulating existing informal e‐waste trades to preserve livelihoods dependent on these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various forms of informal activity have long played an under-recognized yet substantial role in solid waste management, especially in developing countries. In particular, informal activity is prominent in the electronic waste (e-waste) sector, whose volume and impacts have grown rapidly over recent decades. While the worrying aspects of informal e-waste recycling have been widely discussed, less attention has been given to its positive potential and to its relation to formal e-waste actors and policies. These topics have direct implication for pathways for transitioning from informality, and, in particular, ways in which informal recyclers can build on their strengths while beginning to operate in cleaner ways that retain livelihoods while reducing ill effects. In this paper, we draw upon extensive field work as well as secondary literatures to offer a taxonomy of management stances towards informal e-waste practices. These range from hostility through disconnection to interaction and, finally, synergy. Our recommendation is for the latter since the informal sector has important strengths and merits, as well as its harmful aspects, while formal approaches that ignore or attempt to squelch the informal sector do not yield constructive outcomes. Specifically, we suggest an incremental ratcheting synergistic model that draws on the respective strengths of both sectors to forge a genuine partnership between them. We describe six key elements of this model, and illustrate it through application to the Israeli–Palestinian context we have studied in depth. In particular, we show how the treatment of copper cables, now one of this industry's largest and most harmful segments, can be improved through an incremental series of synergetic solutions that preserve or even improve livelihoods of informal recyclers while greatly reducing their health and environmental impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]