Organised on 19th April 2023

In this webinar, we discuss if people’s behaviours could be influenced through projects. We throw the spotlight on waste behaviours and try to understand if behaviour changes only in the short term.

From Lucy Stevens, we hear about the extent to which training, capacity building, and campaigns work and what are some of the challenges. How practical action includes technology justice and systemic change in their behaviour change activities.

From Sally Cawood, we understand more about community/citizens’ behaviour change and perceptions with respect to her research on pit emptying workers in Asia.

SPEAKERS

Dr Lucy Stevens, Head of Cities Fit for People programme @Practical Action

Lucy leads Practical Action’s change ambition on Cities fit for People. She has supported Practical Action’s work tackling poverty in urban slum communities since 2002. The programme focuses in particular, on WASH and waste management services with people-centred perspectives. She recently led the production and engagement strategy for a flagship report, ‘Managing our Waste’, putting people back at the heart of waste management planning and solutions. Lucy has had a variety of roles at Practical Action, including recently serving as Acting Director for the Influence and Impact team. She is an experienced manager, leader and influencer with a wide network. She spent 10 years supporting their operational work in multi-country programmes with vulnerable urban communities before joining Practical Action’s policy team in 2012. Her work included leading the production and engagement strategy of their highly influential Poor People’s Energy Outlook.

Sally Cawood, Lecturer in Economic Geography

Sally’s research and teaching sit at the intersection of human geography, urban studies, critical development studies, political ecology, and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) engineering. Over the past ten years, she has worked on interdisciplinary research projects on urban poverty and climate change, water and sanitation, and hazardous labour practices, including manual scavenging. She is currently the principal investigator on a UKRI-ESRC-funded project (2022-25) focusing on the historical (colonial) legacies and contemporary realities of those manually handling human waste in drains, pit latrines, septic tanks, and sewers in Bangladesh and India.

MODERATOR

Mansoor Ali, Solid Waste Management Expert

Dr. Mansoor Ali is a solid waste management expert with more than 35 years of experience in planning projects, designing systems, assessing recycling potential, and creating livelihoods from waste-related activities, with extensive experience in Pakistan. Recycling and livelihoods from waste is a key focus area of his work. He completed his Ph.D. in income and employment from solid waste collection and recycling in 1996 from WEDC, Loughborough University UK, and worked on a number of related projects in 18 developing countries. His Ph.D. was about waste systems in Karachi. He has carried out some pioneering work in waste collection, recycling, livelihoods from waste, and small-scale waste collections for DFID and was a lead author of DFID topic guide on solid waste management. His current research involves looking into livelihoods and waste systems in low-developing countries and recycling plastics.