Towards flexible evaluation schemes in areas with lacking information: a case of waste governance in Mexico

Abstract

Local governments face the need to achieve sustainability in the provision of public services and, to do so, proper governance is essential. This work proposes a method to assess governance in local WM systems based on a set of indicators that are flexible and robust enough to allow objective and reliable evaluation even where the information that is available is deficient. The proposal is based on a set of indicators divided into six categories which represent an increasing order of governance maturity: Institutional framework, Government effectiveness, Transparency and accountability, Network creation, Participation, and Corruption control. The paper presents the proposal and a first test in two Mexican municipalities, as an example of MSWM systems in an incipient stage of development, where there may be serious limitations in terms of access to information. The results show that the methodology can be replicated in different contexts and can be useful for making decisions about improvements in MSWM or for comparing them with others. In addition, sufficient information was obtained for a fist diagnosis of the cases studied, which indicates the coherence of the proposed framework: the results in the lower categories are better, and get worse as we progress through the following ones.