Reframing Municipal Waste Management and Financing from Community Recycling and Compositing to Metropolitan and Multilateral Cooperation

The issue of sustainable waste management and financing has become central in all regions across the globe, echoing a note form the World Bank a decade ago forecasting the doubling of waste generated by cities around the globe in less than a decade.
Examples from emerging countries such as Malaysia and other countries in South-East Asia show that high rates of economic growth and smart urban development have pushed for an accelerated transformation of households waste collection and management. This crosses the line with health issues and environmental issues in the context of transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
Developed countries are facing rather similar issues of reducing waste while promoting circular economy as part of local, metropolitan, national, regional efforts to reach the targets of the Paris agreement. Yet in the Global South, lower- and middle-income countries, which are often facing high levels of urbanization and /or demographic growth, do not have the same domestic resources to cope with a rising ‘tsunami of waste’.
The event echoes the World Habitat Day of 2018 which focused on ‘municipal solid waste management’ … alongside recent policy proposals such as by the Uurban20 India in 2023 which proposed to reposition waste issues at the crossroads of ‘accelerating climate finance’ and ‘encouraging environmentally responsible behaviour.’
Today, more than 35% of the world’s urban population have no access to municipal waste management. Following the experts of the 2019 Global Sustainable Development Report, the COP28 in Dubai has acknowledged the linkage between climate issues and pollution. On the sides of the climate negotiations under the UNFCCC, over two dozen of side events in country and thematic pavilions showcased policy, financial and technological innovations addressing the issue of waste.
In the context of the COP29 where ‘climate finance’ issues will be central, building on the lessons from the 2023 SDGs Summit and the 2024 Future Summit, the event will explore concrete ways to improve waste management and financing at all scales. It will build on a wide array of experiences from Sepang in Malaysia to the Greater Paris region in France, alongside other cases in South and Central Asia, Africa, South-America, etc… It will discuss how new initiatives such as the ‘reform of the global financial architecture’, including the new role of MDBs to support climate action, could include waste management and financing issues at scale. It will discuss how waste management could benefit from better public and private financial support in the context of the G20 ‘green development pact for a sustainable future’ adopted by the G20 India in 2023.
Despite the worldwide development of circular economy, waste management remains underfinanced in many middle- and lower-income countries, where solutions stemming from the informal economy and solutions from the industry don’t add up.