Integrating payment for environmental services into an approach informed by the ecology of law: a case study on Brazilian waste pickers

Recycling and waste management are critical environmental matters for the urbanising Global South and Brazil. These services are largely provided by informal workers known as waste pickers. Their work environment is challenging for many reasons—including the precarity of their work, the lack of legal protections and of recognition for their role in providing environmental services and the current threat to their livelihoods from new technologies, mainly waste-to-energy incineration. Greater inclusion of waste pickers in policymaking and implementation is required to engage and support them and provide locally effective solutions. However, the intrinsic shortcomings of the philosophy underpinning contemporary environmental law hinder the development of such policies. In contrast, ecologically informed approaches to environmental and ecolaw emerge as innovative frameworks to guide environmental law. At present, waste pickers in Brazil advocate they should be paid for the environmental services they generate for society through the instrument of Payment for Environmental Services (PES). This instrument has been extensively implemented in Brazil, particularly in rural areas, despite being criticised for its limited socio-environmental effectiveness. Among Global South countries, Brazil has been a fertile ground for discussions about the role of waste pickers because it is the leading country in terms of legislation and enterprises to engage and support these workers. Therefore, this thesis aims to answer how PES can be reconceptualised to support and meet the needs of waste pickers in Brazil. This investigation is particularly important to enable future legislation based on a theory that acknowledges locally oriented solutions, legitimises policymaking processes and creates a socially just, environmentally sustainable regulation. Thus, the design of an effective PES model offers to mitigate the socio-environmental problems (i.e. pollution and livelihood conditions) of waste management in Brazil. To examine concerns with local conditions, challenges and opportunities, this thesis adopts a socio-legal methodology, which entails a case study on Brazil. In addition, ecolaw is deployed as an analytical framework to identify the failings of the law in the different management models. It is also used to devise a solution, namely a new PES model. This thesis is not theoretical in nature; it is primarily an analysis of policy and practice, and it is a reform-oriented study. In this sense, it finds that PES matures through the adapted guidelines of the ecolaw framework, becoming a legitimate mechanism for sustaining waste pickers in Brazil. This research is significant because waste pickers are vital to sustainable waste management in the Global South. Currently, Brazil’s systems fail to adequately put the legislation into practice, leaving these workers marginalised from formal waste schemes. The reconceptualised PES model for waste pickers developed in this thesis can serve as a blueprint for other jurisdictions concerned with sustainability, which can use it to develop effective waste management systems that recognise the strengths of the informal sector.