Solid waste management in Haiti: institutional, territorial, and operational failures of public action

Abstract

Solid waste management in Haiti is a long-standing public-policy problem whose persistence cannot be explained solely by inadequate equipment, lack of civic responsibility, or the financial constraints of local authorities. For several decades, the country has had regulatory texts, institutions with responsibilities in the sector, programs financed by international partners, and a large number of technical assessments. The decree of March 3, 1981, the presidential order of April 21, 1983 concerning the Truitier site, the national policy framework document prepared in 2016, and the law of September 21, 2017 creating the National Solid Waste Management Service reflect a succession of initiatives intended to structure the sector.¹

This gap calls for a shift in the analysis. Haiti's problem lies not primarily in the absence of standards or institutions, but in the difficulty of transforming formal arrangements into a continuous, funded, coordinated, and territorially organized public service. Successive projects have produced occasional, sometimes significant improvements, without creating a sustainable national chain from pre-collection to final disposal. This institutional weakness is compounded by constraints related to territorial organization: poorly planned urbanization, hard-to-access neighborhoods, scarcity of land available for infrastructure, exposure to flooding, and insufficient coordination among waste management, drainage, and urban planning. The analysis developed in this article argues that sector reform should be approached as a systemic public policy built around six complementary dimensions: the legal framework, institutional governance, financing, operational capacity, integration of social and informal actors, and spatial planning.

1. The persistence of a long-standing public problem

The solid-waste problem in Haiti is frequently presented as a consequence of insufficient logistical resources or citizen behavior. These two factors do contribute to the deterioration of the urban environment, but they are not enough to explain the persistence of the problem. The recurring presence of illegal dumps, blocked drainage canals, waste accumulation in markets, and irregular collection operations are also manifestations of a public service whose organization remains incomplete. When collection is neither regular nor geographically accessible, dumping in ravines, canals, vacant lots, or along roads becomes, for some households, a substitute for an absent public service. Individual behavior must therefore be analyzed within the institutional and territorial environment that produces it.

Available estimates also illustrate the difficulty of understanding the sector. In 2019, the United Nations Development Programme reported that a study focusing on Port-au-Prince estimated that only 37% of generated waste was collected daily, leaving several thousand cubic meters of waste uncollected each day.² Two years later, a UNDP publication estimated national production at about 0.6 kilograms of solid waste per person per day and cited a collection rate of around 12%.³ These estimates do not describe exactly the same territory and do not necessarily rely on the same methods. Their divergence nevertheless reveals an important weakness: waste policy still lacks a permanent system capable of determining, for each territory, the quantities generated, waste composition, collection rates, service costs, final destinations, and recovered volumes. Weak data are not merely a statistical problem. They limit the sector's planning, budgeting, and evaluation capacity.

The multiplication of assessments over several decades makes it even more difficult to explain the problem as a lack of knowledge. Evaluations conducted since the 2000s have repeatedly highlighted the same constraints: under-equipped municipalities, discontinuous financing, multiple actors, insufficient infrastructure, difficulty maintaining equipment, and heavy dependence on donor-funded interventions. The evaluation of the Carrefour-Feuilles waste-management program had already highlighted problems of institutional ownership and the fragility of long-term financing.⁴ The problem is therefore not the absence of experimentation. It lies more in the difficulty of transforming lessons from projects and assessments into permanent public-management mechanisms.

2. An institutional architecture struggling to become a system

2.1. The gradual construction of the institutional framework

The contemporary organization of waste management in Haiti developed through successive stages rather than through a single reform. The decree of March 3, 1981 established an initial specific framework and created the Metropolitan Solid Waste Collection Service. The presidential order of April 21, 1983 then reserved the Truitier site for receiving and treating waste from the metropolitan region. Over the decades, responsibilities related to sanitation, waste, environmental health, and urban planning were distributed among municipalities, the Ministry of Public Works, the Ministry of Environment, health institutions, and various specialized bodies.¹ The institutional difficulty therefore does not stem solely from an administrative vacuum. It arises above all from the coexistence of several centers of responsibility that are not always connected by sufficiently precise procedures for planning, financing, oversight, and evaluation.

An important attempt at rationalization emerged in 2016 with the preparation of a national solid-waste management policy framework under the Interministerial Committee for Territorial Planning.⁵ The law of September 21, 2017 then replaced the Metropolitan Solid Waste Collection Service with the National Solid Waste Management Service, under the authority of the Ministry of Environment. In theory, the reform extended the scope of intervention to the entire national territory and broadened responsibilities to several parts of the management chain, including collection, transport, recovery, recycling, treatment, and certain categories of hazardous waste. The shift from a metropolitan service to a national institution represented a substantial change in the legal architecture. However, expanding a mandate does not automatically expand the corresponding human, financial, and material capacities.

Consultations and evaluations conducted after adoption of the law show that the allocation of responsibilities between the national institution and local authorities remains one of the main difficulties. UNDP notably highlighted the need for greater clarification of the functions associated with waste collection, transport, treatment, disposal, and recovery.¹ An evaluation of the sector-strengthening program also concluded that the institutional framework had not reached a sufficient level of operational capacity to produce all the effects expected from the legal framework.⁶ These elements lead to a distinction between formal capacity and actual capacity: an institution may legally hold a national mandate while being unable to exercise it across a large part of the territory.

2.2. Truitier and the limits of a concentrated territorial model

The Truitier landfill encapsulates many of the difficulties accumulated in the metropolitan region. The site, formally reserved since 1983 for receiving waste, gradually operated as an open dump without all the technical systems that characterize a controlled landfill. The diversity of waste received, proximity to the coast, weak containment mechanisms, and exposure of surrounding populations made Truitier an environmental problem as much as a public-service facility. These long-standing constraints were compounded by the deterioration of the security situation in Cité Soleil, which complicated access to the site and affected regular collection and unloading operations.⁷

The dependence of several metropolitan municipalities on a very limited number of facilities creates systemic risk. An interruption in access, a major breakdown, road deterioration, or an environmental problem at the site can affect the entire collection chain. Waste management here connects directly with territorial planning. The location of infrastructure, the distance between waste-generation areas and treatment sites, road conditions, travel time, and the possible presence of transfer stations largely determine service cost and reliability. A system relying on a single site, or one located very far from certain areas, mechanically produces longer routes, higher operating costs, and greater vulnerability to disruptions.

Since January 2026, however, the opening of the Morne Casse landfill in the Northeast has altered the national situation. The facility was designed to serve several local authorities in the region and represents a concrete shift away from the historical concentration around Truitier.⁸ Its existence does not mean that the country now has a national treatment network. Rather, it provides an opportunity to observe, at a more limited territorial scale, the conditions needed for such infrastructure to succeed. Morne Casse's performance will depend on its effective connection to collection circuits, the availability of transport, the financing arrangements for its operation, maintenance mechanisms, and the ability of the relevant local authorities to use the facility regularly.

2.3. The limits of a project-based approach

International partners have played a major role in the sector's evolution. Funding from UNDP, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and other actors has supported equipment, municipal programs, collection activities, recovery experiments, and planning work. These interventions were often designed in collaboration with public institutions. It would therefore be inaccurate to argue that they systematically replaced the State. The difficulty appears instead when temporarily financed mechanisms must become routine functions of the administration or local authorities.

This transition frequently fails when recurrent expenditures are not integrated into public budgets, equipment maintenance is unfunded, skills acquired by teams are not institutionalized, or the system still depends on the staff and resources of the original project. UNDP evaluations report difficulties with local ownership, intermunicipal coordination, and even land availability for certain facilities.⁶ These constraints show that project sustainability cannot be assessed solely by the number of vehicles purchased, people trained, or facilities built. It depends on the public system's ability to continue financing, operating, and overseeing the service after external funding ends.

3. Reading the problem through state capacity

The concept of State capacity provides a relevant framework for interpreting this situation. Fukuyama distinguishes, among other things, administrative capacity, the quality of the legal order, and accountability mechanisms that allow a State to effectively execute the decisions it makes.⁹ In Haiti's case, the contrast between legal responsibility and capacity for action is particularly visible. Local authorities and national institutions have powers established by law, but the human, material, and financial resources needed to exercise them do not always follow. In several urban neighborhoods, the absence or irregularity of public service has encouraged the development of informal collection, recovery, and resale networks for recyclable materials.¹⁰ These actors perform a real economic function, but their existence cannot compensate for the absence of an overall service organization.

Another weakness concerns coordination among levels of government. A waste-management policy necessarily requires vertical governance: some decisions belong to the central State, others to municipalities, while certain infrastructure must be organized at an intermunicipal scale. Difficulty arises when responsibilities are shared without a clear mechanism specifying who finances, who executes, who controls, and who bears responsibility in the event of failure. The 2017 legal framework provides for cooperation between the National Solid Waste Management Service and local authorities, but later evaluations show that this division still requires practical clarification.¹ The question is therefore not merely which institution has authority. It is whether all these powers form a coherent decision-making and implementation chain.

Comparative research on waste management confirms the importance of this operational dimension. Lutfi and Diartho, in their study of Jember Regency in Indonesia, show that management mechanisms and operational capacities can matter more for policy performance than the existence of the regulatory framework considered in isolation.¹¹ This observation does not imply that the Indonesian context is directly comparable to Haiti's. It does, however, underscore a fundamental distinction in public-policy analysis: a rule creates an obligation, but it does not provide the equipment, teams, or financing mechanisms needed to translate that obligation into a service. Recent World Bank work on waste management reaches a similar conclusion for low-income countries, where low collection rates are closely associated with underfunded municipal services and inadequate infrastructure.¹²

4. The six dimensions of a public waste-management policy

Rebuilding the sector requires treating waste management as a system in which several functions are interdependent. A purely legal reform cannot produce lasting results if local authorities lack the means to implement it. Purchasing vehicles does not solve the problem if transfer and treatment sites are inadequate. A new landfill may remain underused if the collection circuits that should supply it do not function. Likewise, a citizen-awareness campaign has limited effect if the service promised to households is irregular. The analysis therefore identifies six dimensions that must be addressed jointly.

4.1. Legal and regulatory framework

Improving the legal framework does not necessarily mean adopting a new general law. The main challenge now lies in translating existing provisions into sufficiently precise operational rules. The responsibilities of municipalities, national institutions, private companies, and waste producers must be accompanied by applicable procedures, technical standards, and control mechanisms. Conditions for licensing operators, obligations relating to waste transport, standards applicable to facilities, management of medical and hazardous waste, and sanctions for illegal dumping must be enforceable by identified institutions with the necessary resources.

Regulation should also define service levels. A legal framework that requires collection without specifying frequency, service areas, or quality criteria makes evaluation difficult. Introducing indicators such as territorial coverage, actual collection frequency, number of identified illegal dumps, or average vehicle downtime would turn a general obligation into measurable accountability.

4.2. Institutional governance

The allocation of functions between the State and local authorities is probably one of the main institutional priorities. A national institution does not necessarily need to directly provide collection in every municipality. Its role may focus on regulation, planning, standards, coordination of supra-municipal infrastructure, and performance monitoring. Municipalities, individually or jointly, can organize local service directly or delegate it to operators.

This organization nevertheless requires intermunicipal mechanisms. Waste rarely follows administrative boundaries. Several municipalities may benefit from sharing a transfer station, sorting center, or landfill facility. Governance must allow costs and responsibilities to be distributed among these local authorities. Without a cooperation mechanism, each municipality is pushed to seek an isolated solution that is often too expensive to be viable.

4.3. Financing

Service sustainability depends directly on its financial model. Collection and treatment generate recurrent expenditures that cannot be financed solely through projects or exceptional operations. Fuel, maintenance, salaries, parts, protective equipment, environmental monitoring, and facility operations are permanent costs. A credible policy must therefore identify the resources that will cover these expenditures before expanding service obligations.

Several instruments can be combined: budget transfers, municipal revenues, contributions from large waste producers, appropriately designed service fees, private-sector participation, and extended producer responsibility mechanisms for certain products. Cost recovery does not mean that the poorest households must directly bear the full cost of the service. It means that total financing must be calculated, allocated, and guaranteed. Without this financial visibility, periodic interruption of operations becomes almost inevitable.

4.4. Operational organization and infrastructure

Sector performance depends on a chain much longer than collection alone. Waste must be pre-collected, consolidated, transferred, transported, sorted, recovered, treated, and finally disposed of under acceptable conditions. Each step depends on the previous one and affects the cost of the next. A system in which trucks travel long distances directly between every neighborhood and the final site can become extremely expensive. Transfer stations can reduce this inefficiency when volumes and geography justify them.

Maintenance must be built into this organization. Public equipment quickly loses value when parts, workshops, mechanics, and repair budgets are not planned from the time of purchase. The Morne Casse facility provides a particularly interesting case in this respect. Its success will have to be assessed several years from now based on its utilization rate, the regularity of incoming waste, its environmental condition, and the ability of the municipalities it serves to sustainably finance transport to the site.

4.5. Social dimension and informal sector

Informal recovery is already a component of Haiti's waste economy. In some areas where municipal presence is weak, independent collectors provide pre-collection or recover materials with market value. UNDP has documented the role of these actors and their low level of institutional recognition.¹⁰ A policy that ignored these workers could eliminate existing capacity without having an immediate public substitute.

Formalization can take several forms: registration, protective equipment, organization into associations or microenterprises, regulated access to sorting centers, and contracting for certain pre-collection activities. This integration also has economic value. Recoverable waste can become a source of income and reduce the volumes sent to final facilities. Waste policy therefore intersects here with urban employment, occupational health, and circular-economy policies.

4.6. Spatial planning

The territorial dimension must be placed on the same level as the institutional and financial dimensions. Geography directly determines whether waste can be collected. In neighborhoods developed without a suitable road network, trucks sometimes cannot circulate. Collection must then rely on pre-collection systems and consolidation points located in accessible areas. Distances among neighborhoods, transfer stations, and treatment sites then affect the number of possible trips, fuel consumption, and cost per ton.

Interactions with drainage are equally important. In Cap-Haïtien, studies by the Ministry of Public Works have shown that waste accumulation in ravines, canals, and waterways contributes to reduced drainage capacity and increased flood risk.¹³ Waste management therefore becomes a component of urban resilience. A drainage policy that ignores waste risks quickly losing effectiveness, while a collection policy that ignores urban structure may fail to serve the areas where illegal dumping is most significant.

Finally, infrastructure location must be integrated into land policy and planning instruments. A landfill requires land, buffer distances, road access, and environmental-impact analysis. Transfer stations and sorting centers must also be positioned according to actual flows. This coordination justifies a more active role for the Interministerial Committee for Territorial Planning in sector planning, in coordination with the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Public Works, local authorities, and other relevant institutions.

5. From one-off collection to a permanent public service

The difference between a cleanup operation and public policy lies in the permanence of the service. A one-off operation temporarily reduces the visible presence of waste. Public policy seeks to prevent that accumulation from recurring by permanently organizing collection, transport, financing, and treatment. This distinction requires knowledge of generated volumes, definition of service areas, route planning, frequency setting, identification of operators, and regular performance measurement.

In the Haitian context, a realistic strategy could be organized around territorial management basins rather than the immediate application of a uniform model to all 149 municipalities. Major urban areas, urban corridors, and groups of municipalities could each have specific plans defining volumes, required equipment, shared infrastructure, financing needs, and institutional responsibilities. This approach would allow solutions to be adapted to the density, road network, land availability, and municipal capacity of each territory.

Transforming the sector also requires a public monitoring system. A small number of indicators would substantially change accountability: share of the population served, collection frequency, quantity collected, cost per ton, fleet availability, share of waste recovered, number of illegal dumps, and environmental compliance of facilities. Public debate could then focus less on equipment announcements or cleanup campaigns and more on actual service performance.

Conclusion

The weakness of solid-waste management in Haiti can no longer be explained by a lack of initiatives. Laws exist, institutions have been created, numerous studies have been produced, projects have been funded, and some infrastructure is now operational. The difficulty lies in linking these elements sustainably. The regulatory framework remains imperfectly translated into implementation procedures, responsibilities among levels of government are still insufficiently stabilized, recurrent service financing is fragile, the operational chain remains discontinuous, and the spatial organization of cities greatly complicates collection.

This interpretation leads to treating waste management as a territorial public policy rather than an isolated sanitation activity. The service simultaneously depends on law, administrative capacity, financing, infrastructure, social organization, and spatial planning. Weakness in any one of these components can greatly reduce the effects of investments in the others. A modern landfill, for example, remains of little use if waste cannot reach it regularly; good regulation has little effect if local authorities lack the means to enforce it.

Haiti's challenge is therefore less to multiply interventions than to transform already identified functions into a continuous public system. The central question is no longer how to periodically rid cities of their waste, but how to guarantee that an organized service collects, transports, recovers, and treats it every day. Only under this condition will investments, including recent infrastructure such as Morne Casse, produce results that outlast the projects that financed them.