The Influence of Solid Waste Management Practices on Urban Environmental Quality in Tanzania Municipalities: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Despite the high growth in urban population, weak institutional capacity and inadequate funding, solid waste management is one sector in urban governance that has faced a lot of challenges in the waste collection, transportation and disposal process in Tanzanian municipalities. Several empirical studies have been conducted in the various cities of Tanzania on waste management; however, there is no systematic documentation of this evidence to link their impact on the environment of cities. This scoping review was to map the current state, scope and type of evidence available on solid waste management practices of Tanzanian municipalities and to understand the state of knowledge on the relationship between solid waste management practices and urban environmental quality. The methodological approach of Arksey and O'Malley (2005) as refined by Levac, Colquhoun and O'Brien (2010) was followed for the review, and reported using the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (Tricco et al., 2018). Through a systematic search of academic journals and other grey literature, 512 records were identified of which 42 were found to be eligible for charting and were charted using a Population–Concept–Context framework. The results show that waste collection services in Tanzanian municipalities are still very unbalanced, institutional and financial capacity is regularly not enough and that while waste management practices are often linked to environmental quality outcomes, it is only rarely measured directly with the tools of standardised environmental indicators. This review reveals a significant lack of longitudinal and comparative studies quantifying this relationship as well as of evidence relating to peri-urban and secondary municipalities other than Dar es Salaam. The results serve as a basis for future primary research and as a municipal authorities' evidence base which is synthesised into municipal waste management policy and planning.