Incineration Politics and the Geographies of Waste Governance: A Burning Issue for Ireland?

Abstract

The governance of waste in Ireland is highly contentious, with conflicts over many issues ranging from landfill expansion to charges for municipal waste collection. One of the most intense conflicts surrounds plans to introduce, over the forthcoming decade, incineration for municipal solid waste for the first time in the Republic. Such conflicts over waste incineration, and particularly over the siting of waste-incineration facilities, are not new phenomena and they have been examined empirically and theoretically through a range of disciplinary lenses and in different geographical contexts. These studies, although useful and interesting, rarely give close attention to the geographical strategies involved in such conflicts. The author's empirical investigation of incineration conflicts in Ireland reveals the centrality of a dynamic and evolving spatial dimension, both in the governing strategies adopted by the state in support of a system of waste management that involves a commitment to incineration, and in the transnational advocacy coalition approach adopted by antiincineration campaigners seeking alternatives to incineration. The author concludes that the scalar strategies surrounding incineration reveal the need for a more intricate analysis of power, politics, and place in the analysis of conflicts over waste governance, both in Ireland and beyond—an approach that may be more clearly articulated through a geographically informed understanding of governmentality.