Policy approaches on E-waste in the emerging economies: A review of the existing governance with special reference to India and South Africa

The stream of E-waste has observed a considerable intensification in the recent decade rendering its management a major challenge to the contemporary world. Considering the complexities associated with this toxic stream of waste, this paper is an attempt to review the existing E-waste governance in the emerging economies, taking into consideration the evidence and experiences of a number of representative countries. Emerging economies are instrumental in the growth and sustenance of the global economy today. However, certain issues such as the governance of E-waste is yet to be studied adequately in these countries and still remains an unexplored area of research. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations along with South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico are considered as representatives of the emerging countries. A systematic literature search has been carried out in Scopus and Web of Science to aid our study. A bibliometric analysis was carried out to situate the research scenario in India and South Africa in particular. We observe that the European Union's landmark WEEE Directive and RoHS Directive have considerable influence on the policies of most of the emerging economies considered for our study purpose. We argue that it is imperative to have a local specific, systematic, organize and stepwise approach towards formulating and implementing the E-waste policies in the respective countries. The fact that, a few representatives from the well-known emerging economies are underrepresented in the E-waste research necessitates adequate attention from the scientific community and policymakers. Overall, it could be concluded that, barring a handful of representative countries, E-waste governance in the emerging economies are yet to be addressed comprehensively both by themselves and the global North. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.