INTERNATIONAL SOLID WASTE ASSOCIATION - Denkstatt

President’s Message
4
It was only in the spring of 2010 that ISWA was able to
set up its new office in the City of Vienna. A few weeks
later we had in place the full complement of staff that
we needed to provide services to all our ISWA members.
The office was officially opened in June 2010 and offers
excellent facilities for both staff and meeting space for
ISWA members.
The policy profile of ISWA is increasing as we expand our
interests into new areas but we are also consolidating
our mainstream activities, mainly through our Working
Groups. Each now has a two-year work programme to
guide their future activities. These activities include regular
technical meetings, Beacon Conferences, assistance
to the ISWA Annual Congresses and the production of
reports and publications.
Within ISWA we are still working towards developing
sustainable solutions to tackle the overwhelming global
crisis of climate change and the associated issues of the
still expanding population growth and burgeoning resource
demand, which is most acute in the case of food.
The security of food supplies is also threatened by decreasing
availability of fresh water, partly of course related to
the climate change problem.
ISWA is now working actively to ensure that the
advantages of enhanced waste management practices
in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change are
recognised by the international community. This is despite
the current consensus opinion that the forthcoming
December 2011 UNFCCC (United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change) CoP17 (Convention of the
Parties’ meeting 17) to be held in Durban, South Africa is
unlikely to be conclusive and that a top down internationally
binding treaty would also be unlikely to emerge
from this meeting. We have to look to both the short
term opportunities and especially the longer term strategies
which are needed to ensure that we can tackle the
problem of climate change.
That the waste and resource recovery businesses need
to showcase what is already being achieved in climate
change mitigation in Durban and beyond is essential.
This will need to be ideally to present what further might
be achieved with enhanced incentives.
In addition to ISWA’s work to support for the Durban
CoP17 meeting there will be the ISWA/Dakofa Conference
in April 2012 focussing on the huge environmental benefits
of enhanced waste management.
The increasing interconnectedness of the world in many
divergent ways: economic, social and communication and
environmental was the main reason for ISWA establishing
its Task Force on Globalisation and Waste Management.
There are several streams of work related to this initiative
including: megacities, the informal sector, global resource
and waste flows and waste trafficking.
The Globalisation and Waste Management Task Force was
set up in 2010 and will provide its main findings in 2012.
In the past year there have been notable meetings, for
example a two-day workshop with representatives of the
informal sector in order to see ways in which we can improve
working relationships between the informal sector
and the mainstream waste management sector, largely
run through municipalities and private companies.
The globalisation of resource flows has been accompanied
by an increasing amount of recyclable materials being
transported around the world, particularly from the
developed economies to those economies growing most
rapidly: China, India, Indonesia and others in South East
Asia, for example.
Sometimes inappropriate and even illegal items and
materials are exported from the developed economies to
developing economies often unable to deal with them.
This waste trafficking can also affect developed economies
where standards of regulation vary. Therefore this aspect
of waste flows will be examined by the Task Force.
Best wishes
Jeff Cooper