Decision making for urban solid waste treatment in the context of territorial conflict: Can the Analytic Network Process help?

There are a number of factors that affect decisions concerning the so-called undesirable facilities such as waste treatment technologies or landfills. These include social opposition and the need for a huge number of social, economic and environmental data to be taken into account. In Italy (as in many other developed nations) any decision to draft a plan, to define the choice on location for an undesirable service requires an immense amount of discussion, negotiation and organization. This usually occurs in open public debates organized by the local Administration. Another main obstacle to the government of the territory are transaction costs which are growing out of proportion. In a situation of high institutional and social fragmentation, the power of veto is in fact multiplied. This paper reflects on the potential of the MCDA to help Decision Makers with particular reference to the involvement of the stakeholders, which face and disclose all the elements stopping or affecting the choice. The case study presented concerns the current debate in the Aosta Valley region, a small independent region in the north-west Italy, about the best choice for the treatment of municipal solid waste. The Analytic Network Process is applied in order to rank three alternative technologies of waste treatment (namely mechanical biological treatment, incineration -direct combustion-, gasification) and to identify the priority ranking between the elements under examination (namely environmental, social, economic and technological aspects).