From Prohibition to Protection: A Governance Framework for Asbestos Remediation in Vulnerable Settlements

Legacy asbestos in low-income housing remains a persistent environmental health risk that regulatory prohibitions and occupational standards alone cannot effectively address. Despite established hazards, comprehensive governance frameworks for large-scale asbestos remediation in vulnerable settlements remain underexplored. Here, we analyze an asbestos remediation implementation framework developed for state-funded housing and embedded within South Africa’s Programme on Rectification of Pre-1994 Residential Properties, using policy design analysis and literature synthesis, and derive an analytically abstracted Risk-Governed Housing Remediation Framework. This framework integrates risk appraisal, multi-level institutional coordination, engineering standards, occupational health safeguards, procurement design, fiscal oversight, and community participation into a coherent implementation model. The analysis shows that effective remediation is fundamentally a governance challenge requiring deliberate orchestration across regulatory, financial, professional, and social domains. This approach demonstrates how environmental rights can be operationalized and offers lessons transferable to the management of legacy environmental risks in vulnerable settlements worldwide.