Sustainable waste management through cooperation: Insights from Latin America

Municipal solid waste management remains a persistent challenge across Latin America, where rapid urbanisation, uneven fiscal capacity, and fragmented local governance constrain sustainable service delivery. Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) has been proposed as a way for municipalities to address these constraints, yet comparative evidence remains limited on the configurations of governance, fiscal, and demographic conditions associated with sustainable waste-management outcomes. This study applies fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to original survey data from 35 municipalities in 14 Latin American countries, complemented by desk research. It examines whether collaborative IMC, municipal scale, and budget per capita are necessary or sufficient for membership in three sustainability outcome sets: environmental, social, and economic sustainability. The analysis identifies no substantively strong necessary conditions. Environmental sustainability is associated with two sufficient configurations: one combining collaborative IMC with absence of larger municipal scale, and another combining absence of collaborative IMC, larger municipal scale, and higher budget per capita. Social sustainability is associated with two configurations centred on larger municipal scale, while no sufficient configuration is identified for economic sustainability. Sensitivity analysis confirms that the collaborative environmental pathway and the social sustainability configurations remain consistent across alternative budget-per-capita calibrations, whereas the larger non-collaborative environmental pathway is more calibration-sensitive. The findings show that sustainability dimensions do not follow a single configurational logic. Collaborative IMC appears relevant for environmental disposal outcomes among small municipalities, but it is not sufficient for broader social or economic sustainability outcomes.