Reducing Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution in the Global South: Lessons from the SMEP Program

This special issue of the Journal of Developing Societies (JDS) is the product of an attempt to bridge the divide between academic researchers and development professionals. We saw the opportunity to bridge this gap through bringing researchers and professionals together to focus on the Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution (SMEP) program, which is a collaboration between the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) of the government of the United Kingdom. The SMEP program is aimed at reducing the environmental and social impacts of manufacturing in the developing countries, primarily through research activities and developing technical solutions that will help reduce the levels of pollution and environmental degradation generated by manufacturing processes in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia (SA).

The articles in this special issue of JDS examine practitioner insights from a series of SMEP projects on reducing the pollution involved in manufacturing in SSA and SA, and address the need to develop long-term causal theories about what types of intervention strategies can be most effective in tackling the daunting issues involved in reducing this pollution. The academic specialists involved have created a scaffold of theoretical and logical rigor, while the practitioners have provided invaluable empirical content and pragmatic experience. A review of the relevant theoretical literature and empirical data on similar projects has been conducted to ensure that the lessons learned from SMEP projects are fully understood and shared with all those who are likely to benefit from this information.

The SMEP project documents have served as a springboard for the first drafts of the articles written by the academic team, which were then vetted and commented upon by the practitioners involved in this collaborative effort. Through multiple discussions, a synthetic product that is both theoretically grounded in the academic literature and empirical knowledge, was created. The exercise culminated in a series of day long workshops organized by UNCTAD during April 2022. These workshops included the invited academics, practitioners, and business entrepreneurs from the two regions studied, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The first article in this special issue of JDS introduces circular economy (CE) theory and methods, and situates the SMEP effort in the CE discourse as a bold experiment in trying to reduce pollution in manufacturing in the Global South. It also explains the SMEP logic behind choosing the two regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as the sites for pollution reduction projects, since they are the locations with the fastest growing un-remediated pollution from manufacturing. The other articles examine a series of different sectors, from the manufacture of textiles to batteries, where important patterns, problems and causal factors are uncovered and examined. The third article focuses on projects concerned with the uniquely daunting issue of plastic waste and the challenges of finding substitutes for the many relatively cheap, lightweight, and versatile products made with plastic. The fourth article provides a deep sectoral examination of pollution in tanneries, which offers an on-the-ground assessment of potential solutions. The leather industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in the two regions and is also one of the most toxic. It is important in terms of its economic development potential and the potential for significant reductions in pollution as well as improvements in workers’ health and safety in this industry.

The workshops were an exciting glimpse into the benefits of greater academic–practitioner collaboration. Representing a diverse group of stakeholders, the participants provided perspectives not found in the existing literature. For example, a small leather producer from India explained the kind of challenges that are involved in reducing tannery waste by small and medium sized enterprises in the leather industry. This was reflected in a series of conversations with private sector stakeholders who emphasized the limitations of regulatory responses, and the value of developing new environmentally friendly business models. The power and insight of NGOs was also clear in discussions about how training programs in Bangladesh had helped to reduce medical waste, and the forthcoming shift in values across SA and SSA as young people become more environmentally aware.

Members of international organizations also were involved in the workshops, and called attention to the large gaps in the data available, such as the lack of information about the trade in items that have plastic components, which are not counted in the estimates of plastic waste. One idea presented during the workshop by a South African participant was the potential importance of re-manufacturing used goods in Africa, which, if the right incentives are put in place, could help to vastly reduce the need for recycling used products while also providing new employment.

We would like to thank the SMEP program, UNCTAD, and Simon Fraser University, whose work–study program funded the research assistance of Shoukot Ali. Patty Hira also helped with basic research on this project. The following individuals provided valuable comments during the research seminars which took place as part of the development process of the article series: Maria Durleva, Natasha Mahezabin, Desta Mebratu, Harro von Blottnitz, Alexa von Geusau, Amanda Dinan, Liubov Obraztcova, Robi Redda, Glen Wilson, Tatiana Terekhova, Chris Whyte, Peter Smalley and Charlene Mwangi.

Our hope in presenting this special issue of JDS is not only to share the lessons of the SMEP program about reducing manufacturing pollution at the source, but also to lay out the foundation of what we hope will be a developing partnership between academics and practitioners that ultimately leads to better causal theories, a faster learning curve, and more effective action that recognizes the vital importance of local context. We see a number of new innovative developments coming out of this effort. The first is the urgent need to find other bridging projects between academics and practitioners, so that we can establish a learning curve for development policies and projects without losing the detailed knowledge of the local and sectoral context. The second is the need to consider how to bring the stakeholders at the global, regional, and local levels together. Greater diversity and coordination among donors to create larger projects, such as waste treatment plants, is sorely needed. The third type of innovative development is to find pathways to increase government regulatory capacity in the Global South, without losing sight of the need to create regulations that are supported by the private sector and lead to “natural adoption.”

A research agenda can form around these developments, and this special issue of JDS presents some promising new directions for future research: on incentives for energy and materials savings; increasing public interest and pressure for greater awareness and monitoring of the costs of pollution, expanding the CE approach into the agricultural–fisheries sector; creating industrial parks and hubs with renewable energy, materials by-product sharing, and resolving the social, labor, and gender issues associated with CE. The articles in this special issue on the SMEP program show that there are multiple pathways towards sustainable growth, which need to be explored and developed going forward.