Some of the world’s poorest countries have difficulty accessing finance and technology to implement waste management and recovery programmes although some projects are being fast-tracked with support under the Kyoto Protocol and its Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
A separate assessment by UNEP’s Risoe Centre in Denmark estimates that around 320 (or just under 6 per cent) of CDM projects in the pipeline are related to landfill gas. This, according to experts, is just the “tip of the ice-berg” in terms of the potential. China, for example, produces 254 million tons of refuse a year, yet only 2.5 per cent of all CDM projects in China are landfill ones. In India, just under two per cent of CDM projects are landfill.
The Executive Secretary of the Basel Convention, Ms. Katharina Kummer Peiry, supported the Waste and Climate Change report. “I welcome this report as a basis for addressing the ways in which waste management can help combat climate change, an important issue that has so far been underestimated. The Secretariat looks forward to joining forces with others in strengthening this link through the environmentally sound management of waste,” she said.
The Full Report can be downloaded from:
The Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal is the most comprehensive global environmental agreement on hazardous and other wastes.
Source: UNEP.
