Application Documents for the Call for Master Theses of ...

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Application Documents

for the Call for Master Theses of Environmental Systems Sciences for the

Award Ceremony in May 2015

Applicant: Yanzhu ZHANG

Study: Erasmus Mundus Master's Programme in Industrial

Ecology (Double Degree MSc. Leiden University – TU Delft; University of Graz)

Title of the Master Thesis: Strategic Scenario Study on International Cooperation

of E-waste Management and Metal Recycling

Date of the grading in UGO / TUGonline: 17.10.2014

Contact Information:

Supervisor of the Master Thesis: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Alfred Posch

o Institute / Institution ISIS - Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation &

Sustainability Research

o Phone Number +43 (0)316 380 - 3234

o E-Mail Address [email protected]

Applicant

o Address Stockholm Convention Unit, United Nations Industrial

Development Organization, Vienna International Centre, Vienna, A-1400, Austria

o Phone Number +43 676 7074359

o E-Mail-Address: [email protected]

_______________________________

Signature of Applicant

Deadline: 14th January 2015, 12:00h in the USW Koordinationsbüro, Merangasse 18.

Date for the Award Ceremony: Fr., 15th of May 2015, 17:00h.

Required documents:

Completed and signed application form with contact information

Completed form 'Title of the Master Thesis, Abstract' (max. 1 page)

Completed form 'Summary of the Master Thesis' (max. 3 pages)

Optional description of special performance in one or several mentioned aspects

Master Thesis in electronic form


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Title of the Master Thesis

Strategic Scenario Study on International Cooperation of E-waste Management and Metal Recycling

Keywords (max.5)

Cross-Impact-Balance, Formative Scenario Analysis, Multi-scale Scenario Interaction, International

Cooperation, E-waste management and metal recycling

Abstract (max. 1 page)

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) has become a significant global environmental

challenge that curbs sustainable development in both developed and developing societies in recent

decades. Policy makers and producers around the world have formulated cooperation mechanisms to

tackle the emerging e-waste problem by designing and implementing collection and treatment systems

in order to collect more and treat better. International cooperation mechanisms of e-waste management

and metal recycling have been discussed by scientists in search of a more eco efficient pathway

towards circular economy. Albeit certain e-waste system transition studies have summarized past

experiences, a scientifically sound development of future scenarios dealing with broad aspects of

international cooperation on e-waste management is lacking in literature.

This study explores the expert-based application of transparent analytical tools Cross-Impact-Balance

(CIB) analysis and Formative Scenario Analysis (FSA) to construct multi-scale scenarios for

international cooperation of e-waste management and metal recycling with focus on system dynamics

of Africa continent. The CIB and FSA analysis enabled systematic integration of quantitative and

qualitative knowledge from expert definitions and expert judgments in order to construct and select

internally consistent scenarios on both context and regional levels of system dynamics. Multi-scale

scenario interaction was conducted to screen out the externally consistent accommodations of local

development embedded in North-South and South-South international cooperation.

Regional scenarios showed ‘Producer Responsibilities’, ‘Public awareness of environmental

protection’, ‘Continental competence and leadership of emerging economies’ are three most important

impact factors that distinguished the scenarios. Therefore, these factors are recommended to be taken

as targeted focal points in regional decision making processes. ‘Development Cooperation’ was

evaluated by experts with the highest activity on context scale. The strategic orientation of e-waste

management and metal recycling in African countries should take this impact factor into account in

policy making to find out the best accommodation of local development embedded in North-South and

South-South international cooperation scenarios. The transparent procedural scenario development by

CIB and FSA creates spaces for science-practice collaboration and learning. This helps decision

makers on different levels better recognize potential internal or external interventions or uncertainties.

Scenario trumpet delivers results for the range of possible future outcomes, and provide policy makers

with an early warning system of potential setbacks or bottlenecks.

First Supervisor: Ao.Univ.-Prof. Alfred Posch, ISIS Institute, University of Graz

Second Supervisor: Prof. Anthony Patt, Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich

Third Supervisor: Dr. Grégoire Meylan, Center of Industrial Ecology, Yale University


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Summary of the Master Thesis (max. 3 pages)

The goal of this research is to carry out an analytical scenario development to construct a set

of multi-scale scenarios that open up future trajectories for e-waste management and metal

recycling systems embedded in north-south and south-south international cooperation. The

scenarios constructed with the analytical process will be then further compared with status-

quo scenarios and ad-hoc scenarios to justify the capacity and applicability of the analytical

methods for facilitating decision making, especially on international environmental

governance. To conclude from this study, the main research question is answered in

summary as following,

How do scenarios of global e-waste management and metal recycling with focus on

Africa constructed in an analytical process differ from those constructed in an “intuitive,

ad-hoc” process?

The status-quo scenarios, such as business-as-usual or integrating efficient manual

dismantling in developing world with state-of-art metal recovery in developed world, focus

on the environmental gain and economic gain of now, instead of potential transition

progress of future. Status-quo scenarios provide decision makers alternatives and

opportunities to address urgent environmental impacts and achieve certain environmental

and economic gains through international cooperation. However, such perspective does not

tell how long this kind of cooperation mechanism could be maintained. The system

dynamics on internal and external influences, as well as the transition management, has not

been internalized in status-quo scenarios. Strategic opportunities out of the boundary of

‘environmental and economic gains’ have not been recognized.

The ad-hoc scenarios described in this study deliver holistic one-scale scenario for the

continental development trends of Africa. The ‘Brenthurst Papers’ delivers three ad-hoc

scenarios, “Africa takes charge”, “Give and take”, “Africa follows” to give holistic

description of continental strength in “good, intermediate, bad” levels. However, this

scenarios take Africa a whole component and only look at the averaged continental strength.

The country specific variances and differences are not taken into account for the scenario

generation. For any issue, such as “Policy and legislation development & enforcement”, the

level of development in big emerging economies such as South Africa and less developed

countries such as Ethiopia might be significantly different. Therefore, the differences and

dynamics within the continental system have not been addressed. The problem of taking

average capacity as continental strength is a very rough and careless scenario formulation

process. It might overlooked strategic development opportunities of identifying

industrialization niches in some countries to establish industrial cluster in these countries to

formulate regionally centralized e-waste management and metal recycling solutions.

Currently, the international cooperation of metal recycling from e-waste is mainly bilateral

collaboration of individual African countries with Western partners. The coordination within

Africa continent is significantly overlooked. Symbiosis and cluster effects could be identified

and augmented if these frontrunners could manage to introduce fund on one hand to

develop a centralized metal recycling facility while at the same time coordinate neighboring


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countries to guarantee sufficient metal scrap influx. Therefore, the ad-hoc scenarios have to

take these internal uneven into account.

In the Brunthurst Papers for Africa development in 2020, the drivers of the system change

were identified. Key drives on system dynamics of socio-economic development have been

identified including ‘economic growth’, ‘demography development’, ‘democracy’, ‘conflict

management’, ‘external environment’, ‘non-governmental organization’, ‘diaspora’.

However, these drivers were only inventoried in the Brenthurst Papers as the facets to fabric

the scenarios. It’s said that the Brenthurst Papers aimed not to analyze the influence of the

drivers, but to understand how much space government could intervene. However, on each

scenario of the three, the Brenthurst Papers assumed the same level of spaces for

governmental intervention on each of these drivers. For example, regarding the scenario

“Africa takes charge”, the Brenthurst Papers assumed governments have strong intervention

on all these drivers; regarding scenario “Africa follows”, the Brunthurst Papers assumed

governments have weak intervention on all these drivers; This simple assumption expects all

drivers could be developed with same progress at same time, which is considered as a big

flaw of such ad-hoc scenarios. It also ignored internal and external influences and the mutual

impact of the system variables. In some cases, the development of one aspect might restrict

the development of another because of mutual direct and indirect impacts, or because of

limited resources or money that can only support one aspect to be developed to the highest

level.

Against the status-quo scenarios and ad-hoc scenarios, this study applied the scientifically

sound scenario tools FSA and CIB to systematically integrate and structure expert

knowledge in order to generate future scenarios of international cooperation in the resource

management policy arena for African socio-technical development and transformation

trajectories. The scenario generation on both context and regional scales are considered very

successful and efficient. For context scenarios, 6 impact factors were used for scenario

construction with 3 future levels on each factor identified. From 1458 (729*2) combinatorial

possibilities, only 6 scenarios were internally consistent and only 2 of the 6 are strongly

consistent based on Ensemble Sum analysis. Therefore 0.0013 of the combinatorial

possibilities were successfully screened out. On regional level, 18 impact factors were used

for scenario construction with 3 future levels on each factor identified. Impressively,

43,046,721 (43 million!) combinatorial possibilities exist, however, only 5 out of the 43 million

are internally consistent and successfully screened out.

Therefore, the analytical process conducted in this thesis opened up the possibility spaces

and lead to a wide spectrum of possible future e-waste management system transition on

local scales. This is indicated by the divergence of scenario orientation on both context and

local scales. Desired and undesired scenarios, as well as intermediate scenarios were

generated and selected with high consistency. Moreover, unlike the ‘good, intermediate, bad’

pattern of ad-hoc scenario construction, the scenarios constructed with CIB and FSA

internalized higher degree of system internal variances and dynamics. The system

deconstruction phase releases the space for integrating diversity in scenario building.

Diversity is in general relevant to the degree of deconstruction. The deeper the destruction


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(more impact factors, more future level identifications etc.), the higher diversity could be

internalized in scenario building. Therefore, the diversity of scenario results highly depends

on the quality of system deconstruction. The judgment on the mutual interaction (mutual

impacts, mutual consistency) gives quantitative information that could be used to reduce

diversity and converge the scenarios into consistent results. This capacity is not equipped by

ad-hoc scenario construction as ad-hoc scenarios are holistic scenarios that highly depends

on cognitive capacity to differentiate the scenario orientations. However, due to the limit of

human cognitive capacity, the diversity of ad-hoc scenarios significantly reduced. The

mutual impacts and system dynamics cannot be captured by ad-hoc scenarios.

Besides, scenario development is normally not an end itself, but a good element of

participatory strategic planning and decision making. The procedural function should also

be recognized. In this study, the experts involved are senior experts or researchers who have

rich experience and knowledge on both African local e-waste management situation and

global e-waste management development trends. The CIB and FSA exercise organized a

unique participatory process that facilitates better understanding of current system and

future possibilities. As all these experts including policy makes, researchers, local decision

makers are involved at all stages. Their expert information and expert judgment fabric an

opportunity to re-understand the local e-waste management in Africa with integrated

understanding systemized by diverse perspectives and diverse judgments. The information

delivered by this integrated understand was presented to both local decision makers and

international policy makers. The deviation of their own judgment from the integrated

understanding on current and future system creates spaces for learning. This helps decision

makers on different levels better recognize potential internal or external interventions or

uncertainties. Scenario trumpet delivers result for the range of possible future outcomes, and

provide policy makers with an early warning system of potential setbacks or bottlenecks.

Regional scenarios showed ‘Producer Responsibilities’, ‘Public awareness of environmental

protection’, ‘Continental competence and leadership of emerging economies’ are three most

important impact factors that distinguished the scenarios. Therefore, these factors are

recommended to be target focal points in regional decision making processes. ‘Development

Cooperation’ was evaluated by experts with the highest activity. The strategic orientation of

e-waste management and metal recycling in African countries should take this impact factor

into account in policy making to find out the best accommodation of local development

embedded in North-South and South-South international cooperation scenarios.

In order to gain insight on the African e-waste management scenarios embedded in broader

context of North-South and South-South international cooperation, the multi-scale

interaction and external consistency analysis were used to explore which regional scenario

could be accommodated by which kind of context scenario in term of development

cooperation. “Consensus & Dependency” is a metaphor for North-South cooperation, “New

Development” captures the South-South development trends, “Competition World” reflects

a future with more competition and less collaboration. It’s shown that three types of

development cooperation are strongly (in)consistent with different types of regional

scenarios.


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Description of special contributions to: Instead of the number of answered optional aspects, the relevance and the importance of the

answers based on the Master Thesis are significant for the evaluation.

Optional: Interdisciplinary (max. 500 words)

This thesis is a highly interdisciplinary research, which has been sufficiently demostrated by

the interdisciplinary analysis and reasoning in the thesis, as well as the interdisciplinary

approach of integrating and structuring knowledge of experts coming from different

backgrounds to analyze multidisciplinary interconnections in the system. The thesis research

covers relevant knowledge in environmental science, waste management, industrial ecology,

system analysis, environmental decisions, political ecology and transition management. In

chapter 3 Status-quo analysis, a systematic analysis of global and regional e-waste problem

has been given from the environmental science and waste management perspectives, the

causal loop diagram, a system analysis method, has been used to structure the dynamics of

e-waste management system in Africa. In chapter 4, the discussion on the “Best-of-Two-

Worlds“ phylosophy of e-waste management is reasoned from the eco-efficiency point of

view and adopts the economic principles. In chapter 5, the analysis with CIB and FSA is

following the cross-impact analysis deeply rooted in German phylosophy and decision

science epistemology. The Brunswikian Lens Model (Brunswik, 1950) is a general epistemic

guideline to structure the thesis research. The techniques has been used in this study for

integrating qualitative and quantitative knowledge, and integrating status-quo analysis and

future analysis as well as knowledge generated via different perceptors. These perceptors

reflecting different facades of the problem are exactly demonstrating the interdisciplinary

synthsis processes.

Besides, E-waste is the most rapidly growing environmental challenge worldwide. However,

challenges from the rising e-waste is not only consequence of growing volume but also

because of the complexity of the components. e-waste management is more than just a

technical problem, but rather a complex problem that is tightly intertwined with socio-

economic factors and political ecology issues. Technical solutions need to be matched with

specific socio-economic conditions in different societal contexts. The approaches handling e-

waste problem in developed countries and developing countries are significantly different.

Therefore, this thesis appraoched the environmental sound management of e-waste in both

EU and Africa with cautious consideration of environmental, economic and social

consequences.

Moreover, to constructe future scenarios, the impact factors and their mutual impacts have to

be identified and evaluated. The fact that experts from different backgrounds, and from

different levels (international, national and local) are all involved gives an interdisciplianry

overview of the most pressing issues and most important impact factors.

Last but not the least, The methods used in this thesis, namely FSA and CIB on the global

environmental e-waste problem, are considered transdisciplinary approach that fit in the so


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called mixed methodology. The mixed methodology successfully combines system analysis,

expert interviews, cross-impact analysis and scenario development in a scientifically sound

systematic outline with a qualitative-quantitative-qualitative approach. This methodguided

transdisciplinary processes could provide a richer picture and a more systemic

understanding of the problem and answer the question ‘can forecasting of future of the

system be based on the perception of how future events may interact?’ The qualitative-

quantitative-qualitative mixed methodology is a systematic technique that mitigate such

inconsistency. Therefore, this thesis proved to be a highly interdisciplinary and

transdisciplinary research.

Optional: Ecological Aspects and/or Perspectives (max. 500 words)

The thesis fell in the relm of Industrial Ecology, a "systems-based, multidisciplinary

discourse that seeks to understand emergent behaviour of complex integrated

human/natural systems". Therefore, when discussing Ecological Aspects, the human factor

must be taken into account. As regards of this thesis, it infers sustainable production and

consumption behaviorial change and the environmental decision making facing the trade-off

of economic gains and environmental gains.

At the World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunis in November 2005, delegates

of 174 countries, including 50 African countries, agreed that ICTs can support economic,

social and cultural development and reaffirmed that “everyone can benefit from the

opportunities ICTs can offer, by recalling that governments, as well as private sector, civil

society and the United Nations and other international organizations, should work together

to improve access to information and communication infrastructure and technologies.”

However, Africa faces a dilemma of banning the influx of electronic devices in order to

control the environmental and ecological damage at the detriment of arrested socio-

economic benefits or promoting digital penetration by importing used electronic equipment

at the detriment of being unable to cope with the waste management due to low economic

and technological capacity. Therefore, promoting “digital penetration“ while providing

environmentally sound management of e-waste requests the Industrial Ecology approach.

The thesis has fully addressed these ecological aspects via the lense of Industrial Ecology,

and therefore included impact factors from environmental, economic and social aspects in

the scenario development. The scenarios provide policy makers with an early warning

system of potential setbacks or bottlenecks in the African ecological mordenization solutions.

One unique ecological aspect of this thesis is that it takes an “resource“ perspective towards

the e-waste in Africa and therefore fully recognizes the potential of creating ecological value

via recycling. The thesis formulates scenarios on various international cooperation potentials

towards a loop-closing production and consumption. Particully for Africa, this establishing

loop-closing value chain means establishing new recycling industries on regional and

continental levels. This niche development could be accommodated in different North-South

and South-South cooperation initiatives which addresses a range of ecological aspects. In


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Figure 8 of the thesis, the causal loop diagram reflects how the e-waste management and

recycling activities could influence and propell the development of education, employment,

trade, manufacturing, consumption, resuse and recycle etc. The socio-economic factors are

tightly interlinked in such ecological web. In Appendix 3, the resource value of those e-waste

in Africa has been articulated. African decision makers (including the experts involved in the

scenario development) are starting to recognize the resource values, particularly the precious

metals, of the e-waste. The ecological value is maximized by the optimization of the life

cycle management of EEE and WEEE.

Optional: Environmental Relevance (max. 500 words)

The master thesis tackled the most pressing global envirnmental challenge, the e-waste,

which is the focal area of United Nations Environmental Programme and many other

national and internatonal environmental policies. The e-waste has become the fastest

growing solid waste stream globally. It’s estimated that annual growth rate range is between

3% and 10% with around 40 million tonnes generated per year. However, 50%-80% of the e-

waste generated in developed countries is shipped to developing countries, such as African

countries and China, for reuse and recycling. A recent UNEP report has estimated that the

number of discarded computers shipped to some developing countries could increase as

much as 500% by 2020. Developing world is forecasted to generate double amount of

discarded e-waste than developed world by 2030. In total 650,000 to 1,000,000 tons of

domestic e-waste is generated in the entire African continent nowadays, which causes

significant environmental pollutions.

In Africa, due to lack of recycling facility and technology, recyclers of e-waste are constantly

exposed to health and safety risks. Sophisticated refinery of precious metals is rarely

evidenced in African countries. It’s reported that open incineration of cable for copper

recovery and open burning of plastics for volume reduction have caused significant emission

of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) which is hazardous to human health and the control

target of Stockholm Convention. Ashes from open burning contain high concentration of

heavy metal, PBDE and could subsequently contaminate ground water and soil, and finally

reach biota causing hazardous impact in the food chain, high concentrations of PBDE are

found in breast milk samples in many African countries. Acid bathing is a common practice

by informal actors for recovering gold and other precious metals however it cause severe

environmental pollution and human health risks. The open incineration of WEEE plastics

containing halogenated flame retardants and plasticizers will generate hazardous emissions

such as dioxin and furans at very high concentration. It is demonstrated that the hazardous

anthropogenic pollutants caused by open burning of cables in only several Western African

countries reach the total amount equivalent to 10-20% of total dioxin air emission in Europe.

In open burning of e-waste, the dioxin and furans released could reach three orders of

magnitude higher than those for the open burning of household waste. At the main informal

recycling sites, copper, lead, tin and zinc concentrations in soil and ash samples are over one

hundred times higher than typical background levels.


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With all the above environmental pollutions being addressed and discussed in the thesis, the

study also adopted a life cycle appraoch to systematically evalute different international

cooperation schemes for environmentally sound management of e-waste and metal

recycling. Besides, as recycling industry is missing in Africa, the thesis also explored the

energy efficiency and resource efficiency in status-quo scenario and future transitions. The

discussion on these lens gives insight on reducing green house gas emmission in the life

cycle of e-waste management and metal recovery, therefore minimizing climate change

potentials. The environmental relevance of the thesis is significant.

Optional: Technological Significance (max. 500 words)

The thesis pinpointed to the technological significance of African E-waste management and

metal recycling by highlighting that sustainable management of natural resources in the

future needs to take a circular economy approach. Such technological significance is

corroborated by the thourough analysis and convincing scenarios on technological

transitons, technology transfer, continental industrial system changes.

Technological Transitions (TT) are defined as major technological transformations in the way

societal functions are fulfilled. Technological transitions do not only involve technological

changes, but also changes in elements such as user practices, regulation, industrial networks,

infrastructure, and symbolic meaning. A transition normally refers to a system innovation

which contains changes from different domains, such as economy, institution, technology,

behaviour, culture, ecology and belief systems, that reinforce each other and lead to a radical

systemic changes. To guide the technological transition in a desired direction, transition

management is proposed to address complex patterns of interaction between different

components in complex adaptive systems, such as the heterogeneous situation of E-waste

management in Africa continent. The thesis study provided policy makers and interested

stakeholders the future image of sustainable WEEE management and perhaps more

importantly how the future vision could be attained from the technological transition

aspects. Therefore, the thesis has touched upon the fundamental thrust of such technonogical

changes such as “EEE producers’ production line“, “ Technology capacity and know-how“,

“Development and practice of recycling industries“, “E-waste disposal/take back system &

facility“. The future development of these key aspects are at the core of improvement of

metal recycling industries. Besides, other aspects such as “awareness“, “markets“, “policy“,

“system finance“, “ labor cost“, “institution capacity“, “producer responsibility“, “

connection to global business“ etc are also well addressed to provide the enabling

environment for the technological transitions.

Besides, such technological transitions of African E-waste management industry are

embedded in the North-South and South-South international cooperations in line with the

United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Technology Transfer is a key component in

such development cooperations. Chapter 3.2.1 has outlined the “Legislation Gap and Lack of

Technological Know-how“. Chapter 3.2.2 addressed the potential of adopting the “Best


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Applicable Technologies“ and particularly via “Technology Transfer“. A systematic e-waste

management transition in African countries needs to mitigate environmental pollution and

hazardous health impact, increase recycling efficiency while maintain socio-economic

benefit. Technology transfer is the key policy instrument for African countries to bridge the

gap of domestic situation and state-of-art recycling in developed countries. Thus a South-

South cooperation in Africa continent should explore the maximum potential of mobilizing

international resources for technology transfer in order to initiate a system change and close

the loop within the continent.

The scenario analysis has openned up the possibility spaces towards differnet combinatorial

results that are likely to nest in the “Consensus & Dependency”, “New Development”,

“Competition World” settings. Each of these scenarios has indicated the recycling industry

technology development, although via different mechanisms. Both technology innovaiton

and industrial economy of scale are vital to the development. Moreover, emerging

economies are targeted to take the lead in system change.

Optional: Economical Relevance (max. 500 words)

Against the backdrop of the e-waste challenges around the world and particularly in Africa,

this thesis controbutes to the scenario development on international cooperation of E-waste

management and metal recycling. The fundematal aim is to open up possibility spaces and

therefore search for an inclusive and sustainable industrial development for a circular

economy in the waste management regime. The economic relevance is absolutely a key

feature of the scenarios themselves.

In chapter 3.1.1, streamlined E-waste management business models have been listed and

introduced. These business models are examples for African countris to establish a recycling

economy. Envisaging the strength and weakness of both WEEE management systems in

developing context and developed context, the Bo2W approach aims at integrating the “best”

applicable technologies and pre-processing practices in developing world for manually

dismantling e-waste and “best” available technologies of state-of-art treatment facilities in

developed world for end-processing practices and hazardous removal in order to close the

material cycles in an environmental and economic sound manner. In chapter 4.1.2, the “best

of 2 worlds“ phylosophy has been discussed for its highest eco-efficiency, namely

environmental gain and economic gains.

However, the comparison of seven scenarios is based on the integrated score of

environmental and economic gains and losses of both developed countries and developing

countries as a whole. The allocation of gains and losses have not been specified in the two

different worlds. Figure 17 provides an deeper insight on the economic gains and losses

throughout the value chain in both developing and developed countries regarding the “best

of 2 worlds“ strategy.


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The multiscale scenarios pinpointed to the future international cooperations of e-waste

management and metal recycling business nested in three global context possibilities:

“Consensus & Dependency”, “New Development”, “Competition World”. The multiscale

scenarios have described at length whether African countries should continue the “best of 2

worlds“ business of metal recycling by outsourcing the end-processing to state-of-art

smelters in other parts of the world or establsih a centralized e-waste management and metal

recycling industry in Africa to boost domestic and regional economy of scale.

In Appendix 3 (page 151 - 173), data from StEP World Map and material concentration data

from UNEP International Resource Panel reports were used to calculate the material content

and corresponding monetary value in each of African countries, country by country and

material by material. This analysis is a first-of-its-kind detailed calculation as nobody has

ever done this before, and gives an overview of the monetory value of the resources. The

analysis presents strong economic incentives to national and international policy makers to

set up the circular economy business model and recycling industries to achieve continental

strength and economy of sale.

Optional: Social Significance (max. 500 words)

The social significance of the thesis research could be seen on three-folds: 1) addressing the

pressing social challenges such as the social vulnerable inforaml sectors in the value chan. 2)

integrating social impact factors and their future levels in the scenario development. 3) rsults

deliver policy recommendations on social improvement.

Informal actors in e-waste collection and recycling are pivotal players in e-waste

management systems in African countries. Most of actors involved in informal recycling

derive their livelihood from the job. In many countries, informal collectors work both on

collection and dismantling in poor working condition for long working time. Many informal

recycling practitioners live under international poverty line of US$1.25 per day. Collector

and dismantlers are exposed in severe health and safety risks and many reported injury and

illness under hazardous emission. However, these informal workers seek valuable materials

for daily income but don’t understand the principles of formal recycling system such as take-

back system. There are different reasons causing the existence of ineffective informal WEEE

recycling sector in developing countries, including: the consumers unwilling to dispose their

end-of-life products; consumers unwilling to pay recycling fee or collection service;

emotional attachment on end-of-life products; low environmental awareness; insufficient

institutional support for recycling, lack of interest from private environmental governance;

insufficient legislation enforcement; low enforcement capacity etc. While many of these

reasons stand solid for African socio-economic status, an additional featured reason for the

African situation is the salient poor and social vulnerable people who have no alternative

employment opportunity to derive daily income. The piling up of e-waste gives the

“scavengers” a means for making a living. It’s thus suggested that policy incentives should

consider the potentials of informal sectors before introducing a parallel competition to


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informal sectors. Poverty eradication should thus be integrated into e-waste management

strategies by African policy makers. The formalization of current informal sectors into an

officially acknowledged recycling chain requires a system transition that contains changes

from different domains, such as economic patterns, institution incentive, technology

capacity, behavior adaptation, culture, legislation and belief systems. And the system

transformation needs the collective effort of multiple stakeholders. This thesis has explicitly

addressed these social vulnerable groups and pointed to an inclusive and sustainable

industrial development pathway. The thesis has achieved high social significance in terms of

elaborating the social benefits of formalizing the informal actors in the e-waste value chain.

Moreover, in the scenario development procedure, impact factors on the social aspects have

been identified with their mutial interconnection systematically evaluated. On context level,

“ International law and treaties“, “International standards on recycling“ are addressed. On

the regiona level, social impact factors include “ National policy & legislation development“,

“Producer Responsibility“, “ Presence and activities of informal sector“, “Bad business

behavior“, “ Public awareness of environmental protection“, “Public awareness of

environmental protection“, “ Decision maker’s attitude towards e-waste“. These social

impact factors were further leveled for future possibilities and evaluated by the cross-impact

consistency analysis. Therefore, these social aspects have been successfully fabircated into

the scenarios.

Finally, Regional scenarios showed ‘Producer Responsibilities’, ‘Public awareness of

environmental protection’, ‘Continental competence and leadership of emerging economies’

are three most important impact factors that distinguished the scenarios. Therefore, these

social factors are recommended to be taken as targeted focal points in regional decision

making processes.

Optional: Other Aspects or Perspectives with USW-Relevance, brought by the applicant (max.

500 words)

This thesis is an unique and first-of-its-kind study on several aspects. The key research

objective of this thesis is three-fold, and the research is very rigorously conducted with

involvement of the most relevant and most knowledgable experts in the world, including 6

experts from United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) headquarters, 1

expert from United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), 1 expert from World

Resources Form / EMPA, 1 expert from United Nations University (UNU), 2 experts from

Basel Convention AsiaPacific Regional Center / Tsinghua University, 2 expert from Basel

Convention Africa (English speaking countries) Regional Center / Africa Institute.

As e-waste is becoming a thriving challenge to many developing countries in Africa, the

future scenarios of e-waste management and metal recycling have been concerned by both

African decision makers and international community. Therefore, the scenarios themselves


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as results are the expected outcome of this research, especially these results are also

welcomed by many decision makers. As introduced in Problem Definition in the thesis,

system transition on e-waste management has rarely been discussed. Conventional transition

management studies looked into past experiences and summarized the past development

trajectories. Future transformation possibilities and development trajectories remain to be

identified. Therefore, this thesis research is a unique study so far that uses systematic

scenario methods to deliver future possibilities on e-waste management issue, with unique

focus on African context. Moreover, this thesis is a unique study that construct scenarios on

continental level, with consideration on international influences. In order to capture the

impacts on international level for scenario construction, this research involved experts who

have intensively researched or worked on the global e-waste management issues,

particularlyn experts from many international development agencies that have strong

expertise and impacts on global resource management affairs. The rich experience and high

level of experts guaranteed the quality of scenario result as trustworthy, valuable and

informative.

Secondly, the research is also methodology oriented. In this thesis, two scenario methods,

CIB and FSA, have been applied. Both methods have strength and weakness. The choice of

the method on context and regional level reflected the consideration on their capacity and

suitability for scenario construction for real-world international problems. Many other

studies have used these two methods more for local or regional scenario construction, but

not too many on international or continental level. This research functions as an explorative

study using the methods on large context problems. After constructing context and regional

scenarios, this research included an external consistency analysis which explored the

interaction of scenarios on multi-levels based on information obtained from the same group

of experts, which is different from other multi-scale scenario studies that use existed

scenarios on one level. This gives large space for testing the flexibility of the methodology.

Moreover, the key research question asks how scenarios constructed in an analytical process

could differ from those constructed in an “intuitive, ad-hoc” process. Therefore, there is

strong interest to explore the functionality and the formative (“forming”) capacity of the

chosen scenario approaches. By comparing the scenario results to ad-hoc scenarios, we have

seen the advantage and scientific rigor of the formative methodology, both on the quality of

scenario result themselves and on the degree of transparency of processes.

Third, the research also tries to find future applicability of the cross-impact scenario methods

in decision making process, especially in international agencies that call for high

transparency on behalf of many international stakeholders. Involving United Nations (UN)

organization is a good approach in this research as many decisions made by UN agencies

have impacts on stakeholders in international community. This study thus investigates the

(potential) impacts of such procedure on the UN organization, and the possibility for such

methods to be involved in policy making or decision making processes in such

organizations. All these three-fold objectives are integrated in this research with a strictly

procedural analysis.


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Special Merit of the Thesis

This Master thesis is officially registered 30 ECTs thesis work at Institute of Systems Sciences,

Innovation and Sustainability Research (ISIS) in Karl-Franzens-University of Graz to

complete the second year 60 ECTs mobility study of European Erasmus Mundus

International Master Programme in Industrial Ecology.

The Master thesis project has been conducted within six-month invited visiting study at the

Institute for Environmental Decisions (IED) in Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule

Zürich (ETH Zurich), Switzerland. The thesis is an officially registered 30 ECTs work at ETH

Zurich and also independently graded within ETH system.

The thesis is copied to the following institutions for information purpose;

Africa Institute (South Africa) Basel Convention Regional Center (Africa; Asia-Pacific) Climate-KIC Education Programme (EU) United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Headquarters, Vienna) The thesis involved the following experts in the CIB and FSA procedures:

United Nations Industrial Development Organization

Mr. ALHILALI, Smail Dr. IINO, Fukuya

Dr. CUEVA, Alfredo

Dr. PENG, Zhengyou

Dr. ZHOU, Yunrui

Ms. HERBECK, Elisabeth

World Resources Forum

Dr. SCHLUEP, Mathias

Basel Convention Regional Center (Africa) / Africa Institute

Prof. TAELO, Letsela Dr. KHALEMA, Koebu

Basel Convention Regional Center (Asia-Pacific) / Tsinghua University

Prof. LI, Jinhui Dr. YANG, Jie

United Nations University

Dr. WANG, Feng

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