Community Participation Development in Solid Waste Management in Luang Prabang, Lao PDR

This study was conducted in response to the current situation of the community participation development in solid waste management in Luang Prabang Urban Development Administration Authority (UDAA) of Lao PDR. At present, under the ongoing decentralization policy of Lao PDR, urban management is now requiring local authority to utilize a range of tools and approaches in order to be more effective to deal with number of issues they are faced with.

In case of UDAA of Luang Prabang, community participation development in solid waste management is recognized as one major approach for facilitate development projects in local authorities. This research studies and analyses the official procedures and existing practices of community participation in solid waste management in UDAA through views of local villagers and frontline UDAA staffs and identifies constraints and problems. It also provides recommendations for improving community participation in the conduct of local authorities.

Methods employed in this study include various techniques in collecting primary data, such as site observation, questionnaire survey, and unstructured interviews with key informants in order to describe the state of community participation development in UDAA of Luang Prabang. Opinions and suggestions from local people as well as UDAA staffs regarding community participation development of UDAA were collected. A comparative analysis was then conducted in order to understand the actual situation of community participation in UDAA of Luang Prabang.

The study found that there are problems in community participation conduct of UDAA. Major problems include low number of attendees in UDAA's participatory procedures. Further, the participants' satisfaction rate in these UDAA's putative participatory meetings is only at moderate/low level. Reasons given for low level of satisfaction are inadequacy of solid waste management campaigns, waste management workshop, and community awareness and education programs, lack of coordination between UDAA and community people, and lack of incentives for people to participate in UDAA activities.

In response to the findings to improve and encourage active community participation in solid waste management, all constraints encountered needed to be urgently addressed. This study recommends the way to improve development community participation with provide incentive for local villagers to participate into solid waste management activities and, more importantly enhance capacity of UDAA staffs in community participation development.