Moving the Dial On: Social Inclusion and Waste Pickers Rights

Session Description

Community-Based Research Canada presents “Moving the Dial”: our 2023 E-Learning series. This series will highlight action-oriented community-based research that is ‘moving the dial’ on today’s pressing societal challenges. An important hallmark of community-based research, taking an action-orientated and impactful approach, means research partnerships mobilizing knowledge and mobilizing communities towards positive societal change. The research projects highlighted within this series demonstrate impact of community-based research. We will hear about research partnerships that facilitated actions improving societal conditions, including changes in policies, systems, organizations, and communities where everyone is supported and belongs.

Webinar
This webinar will tell the story of the partnership development project ‘Mapping Waste Governance’, which seeks to identify, examine and document grassroots social innovations and challenges in waste governance under different geographic contexts. Through this research, waste becomes re-conceptualized as a resource and waste management as an inclusive approach, involving different waste actors (waste pickers, small scale waste entrepreneurs, Non-Governmental Organizations) and innovative approaches. Good waste governance can address poverty reduction, build community resilience, and increase environmental sustainability.

The Mapping Waste Governance project gives voice to the generally marginalized group of waste pickers , disseminating findings on everyday knowledge and on community-government partnerships and good waste governance. Long term collaborations and engagements between Canadian and Brazilian researchers, local municipal governments, and waste picker organizations, have paved the way for the creation of the University for and with Waste Pickers (UNICATA), expressing the need for access to continuous education by this generally marginalized population. Webinar presenters will speak about how this project has moved the dial on good waste governance practices as well as the rights and social inclusion of waste pickers.

Live Discussion
Following the presentation, CBRCanada will facilitate a live discussion to explore implications for practice. Breakout groups will be facilitated by webinar presenters. The event will conclude with a large group report-back dialogue. The live discussion will not be recorded. CBRCanada will share a summary of key discussion themes following the event.

Presenters
Dr. Jutta Gutberlet received a PhD from the University of Tübingen in Germany. Initially, she worked at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and since 2001 she has an appointment in the Geography Department at the University of Victoria (UVic), Canada. Early on she created the Community-based Research Laboratory (CBRL), a research hub for academics and practitioners, focused on participatory community engaged research and outreach. She brings an intersectional socioeconomic, cultural and environmental perspective and a participatory action-oriented approach to research, which involves communities and local stakeholders striving for social and environmental justice and empowerment. For over 15 years her research focuses on waste and discard studies and involves long term partnerships with waste picker organizations, social movements and practitioners in many different countries. The most recent study seeks a better understanding of social grassroots innovations and inclusive waste governance, recognizing the public services provided by waste pickers. In 2018, she received the Provost’s Community Engaged Scholar award and, in 2021, the Faculty of Social Sciences Award for Recognition of Outstanding Community Outreach, at UVic. Recently, she was a research fellow at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (2022), a fellow at the Centre for Global Studies (CFGS) in Victoria (2019/2020), and a fellow at the Institut des Hautes Études de l’Amérique Latine (IHEAL), at the Sorbonne University, in Paris (2018). She has published her work in books, chapters and peer reviewed articles. Her research has also been made available to the public in diverse popular communication outlets, including video, policy briefs, folders, newsletters and social media.