Experts reject incineration as climate solution at COP31

By Ryan Ba­choo

Cli­mate ad­vo­cates, re­searchers and youth lead­ers are call­ing on gov­ern­ments to re­ject waste in­cin­er­a­tion and pri­ori­tise ze­ro-waste so­lu­tions as part of ef­forts to tack­le the cli­mate cri­sis.

At a press con­fer­ence at the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP31) yes­ter­day, speak­ers ar­gued that burn­ing waste and ex­pand­ing dis­pos­al in­fra­struc­ture would not ad­dress the root caus­es of the waste cri­sis.

In­stead, they urged gov­ern­ments and cli­mate fi­nanciers to in­vest in waste pre­ven­tion, reuse, re­pair, re­cy­cling and com­post­ing, warn­ing that in­cin­er­a­tion could cre­ate ad­di­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal and fi­nan­cial bur­dens for com­mu­ni­ties.

Mariel Vilel­la, cli­mate pro­gramme di­rec­tor at the Glob­al Al­liance for In­cin­er­a­tor Al­ter­na­tives (GA­IA), said mean­ing­ful cli­mate ac­tion re­quired ad­dress­ing waste at its source.

“We can­not solve the waste cri­sis by build­ing more in­fra­struc­ture to burn or dis­pose of what we pro­duce,” she said, ar­gu­ing that waste pre­ven­tion, reuse and com­post­ing could re­duce emis­sions while de­liv­er­ing ben­e­fits to com­mu­ni­ties.

The speak­ers al­so high­light­ed the re­la­tion­ship be­tween plas­tic pro­duc­tion and fos­sil fu­els, not­ing that green­house gas emis­sions oc­cur through­out the life­cy­cle of plas­tics.

Mo­hamed Ka­mal, co­or­di­na­tor of the Cli­mate Ac­tion Net­work Arab World, said re­duc­ing plas­tic pro­duc­tion and ex­pand­ing reuse sys­tems must form part of cred­i­ble cli­mate strate­gies.

“We can­not tack­le cli­mate change while al­low­ing plas­tic pro­duc­tion to keep ex­pand­ing,” he said.

Con­cerns were al­so raised about the grow­ing pro­mo­tion of waste-to-en­er­gy in­cin­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

Wey­in­mi Okotie, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Green Knowl­edge Foun­da­tion, ref­er­enced a new GA­IA Africa re­port ex­am­in­ing 15 in­cin­er­a­tion projects and pro­pos­als across ten African coun­tries.

She warned that in­cin­er­a­tion could lock mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties in­to ex­pen­sive in­fra­struc­ture, ex­pose com­mu­ni­ties to harm­ful pol­lu­tion and di­vert fund­ing from al­ter­na­tive waste man­age­ment sys­tems.

The dis­cus­sion al­so fo­cused on the need to redi­rect cli­mate fi­nanc­ing to­wards lo­cal­ly led so­lu­tions.

Ja­cob John­son At­tak­pah, ze­ro waste di­rec­tor of the Green Africa Youth Or­gan­i­sa­tion, said gov­ern­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate fi­nanciers need­ed to make fund­ing more ac­ces­si­ble to com­mu­ni­ties and cities al­ready im­ple­ment­ing al­ter­na­tives.

Shahri­ar Hos­sain, rep­re­sent­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Bangladesh, high­light­ed the role of lo­cal au­thor­i­ties in ad­dress­ing the waste cri­sis.

He said cities were on the front­line of the prob­lem but could al­so de­liv­er prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions through po­lit­i­cal sup­port, con­sis­tent pub­lic in­vest­ment and poli­cies that en­able ze­ro-waste sys­tems to ex­pand.

The press con­fer­ence, ti­tled “Ze­ro Waste COP – In­cin­er­a­tors Out. Ze­ro Waste In”, called for cli­mate com­mit­ments to trans­late in­to prac­ti­cal poli­cies and fi­nanc­ing that pri­ori­tise pre­vent­ing waste rather than dis­pos­ing of it.