Applying the Adaptive Systemic Approach to activate community participation in waste management and pollution control in the Inner Murchison Bay, Uganda

Managing waste and preventing water pollution are urgent and interconnected challenges in rapidly urbanizing African cities. In Uganda, unregulated waste disposal is threatening the ecological and social health of Lake Victoria, particularly in Inner Murchison Bay, near Kampala’s Ggaba Landing Site. This study examines how the Adaptive Systemic Approach (ASA), developed within a multi-country African project: Unlocking Resilient Benefits from African Water Resources (RESBEN), activated community participation, fostered co-learning among stakeholders, and developed collaborative capacity. RESBEN, through the ASA, draws on a nested conceptual framing. The foundations are complex social-ecological systems (including the concept of resilience), transdisciplinarity and transformative social learning, with the supporting concept of epistemic justice. The ASA process is designed to facilitate co-designed, adaptive responses to environmental challenges and comprises context analysis, participatory strategic adaptive planning and management workshops, knowledge co-development, stakeholder capacity and capability-building, and participatory monitoring and evaluation with reflexive learning. In Kampala, Uganda, researchers, and stakeholders collaborated to engage with pollution and waste management. Using qualitative methods, including workshop reflections, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and surveys, we identified significant barriers to community participation in waste management. These barriers included cultural beliefs about the lake’s self-purification, limited public awareness, economic constraints, and fragmented institutional governance. Despite these challenges, ASA fostered inclusive engagement, built trust and co-learning, and enabled the co-creation of a shared vision for the future, and actionable community-driven plans. Community-led initiatives, such as clean-up campaigns and local environmental committees, emerged as early signs of collective agency. However, sustaining these efforts requires integrating ASA outcomes into institutional planning, and securing long-term support. The study demonstrates activated community participation, and offers insights for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers interested in inclusive environmental management and governance in African urban contexts.