Continuing problems with uncontrolled landfilling in developing countries highlight the need for education and training, says Suzanne Arup Veltzé
At the ISWA Annual Congress in Copenhagen, ISWA members from Turkey, Bulgaria, Argentina and Brazil presented the waste management problems of their respective countries at a seminar. The main conclusion was that these countries - and countries in similar economic conditions in most cases - face the same kind of problems. The predominant waste disposal method is landfilling, either in the form of merely dumping the waste wherever convenient or different degrees of controlled or sanitary landfilling, although progress has been made in other treatment or disposal methods. In the best cases, waste management plans have been introduced. But in the worst cases, nothing much has been done, and implementation and enforcement of plans and regulations are still severe problems in these countries.
Uncontrolled landfilling will eventually harm the environment - damaging groundwater and causing infections, for instance. This is often accompanied by the issue of human scavengers living off, and on, the dumps and landfills.
Professor Günay Kocasoy from Turkey concluded the seminar by showing a series of slides with pictures of waste dumps from a number of countries in the poorer parts of the world and the appalling conditions the scavengers have to live and work under. Pictures like these say more than any number of words can, and stress the need for action.
The first step to solving these problems - apart from obvious matters such as finding funding and getting political support - is to create awareness of the problems and provide education and training.
ISWA’s new President Niels Jørn Hahn emphasized this when he presented his programme at the ISWA General Assembly. He stressed that ISWA will be focused on the needs for training and education in the developing countries facing environmental challenges and that ISWA will provide such training and education. ISWA has the tools to carry out this part of the programme - in the form of training courses, seminars and the International Waste Manager programme - and ISWA will use them to further the education and training goal.
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Suzanne Arup Veltzé is Managing Director of ISWA.
