EDITORIAL: The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP’s) latest Global Waste Management Outlook 2024 paints an alarming picture of the future if waste generation all over the world is not brought under control urgently. It predicts global waste to grow from 2.3 billion tons in 2023 to 3.8 billion tons in 2050. It also points out that the global direct cost of waste management in 2020 was about $252 billion, but factoring in “hidden costs of pollution, poor health and climate change from poor waste disposal practices” raised it to $361 billion. Without urgent action, this cost is expected to jump to a staggering $640.3 billion by 2050, including $443 billion in externalities.
It’s also as shocking as it is revealing that in 2020, according to available data, 38 percent of all municipal solid waste, about 810 million tons of it, “was uncontrolled”. That means it was “dumped in the environment or openly burnt”. And if waste is managed in the same way as it is right now, this amount will almost double to 1.6 billion tons, “contributing to climate change, marine plastic pollution, and adverse health effects”.
The UN suggests moving to what it calls a circular economy and taking a zero waste approach as the “only route to a safe, affordable and sustainable future”, adding that it would generate a projected annual net gain of about $108 billion through waste avoidance, sustainable business practices, and full waste management.
Waste generation is “intrinsically tied to GDP”, as the report rightly points out, and many fast-growing economies are naturally struggling under the burden of rapid waste growth. And since pollution from waste knows no borders, making this a truly international concern, it is necessary to identify actionable steps to a more resourceful future and emphasise the pivotal role of decision-makers in both public and private sectors to move towards zero waste.
Countries like Pakistan, which do not count among fast-growing economies yet at best boast primitive waste disposal techniques, are at a particular disadvantage. What is more, moving up the learning curve when it comes to such phenomena is nowhere on the government’s priority list. That is partly because it is occupied with far more basic issues like survival and avoiding default but largely due to blatant ignorance of some of the most pressing problems of the 21st century. That is why it is also helpless as it is ravaged by the menace of climate change, finding itself among the top-most countries affected by it.
This UN report must serve as a wakeup call for all governments across the world, especially in the third world where poor social indicators like out-of-control population growth rates and high poverty figures add to the severity of these problems. Issues like global warming and climate change already cannot be ignored, and governments will have to learn to allocate adequate resources for them. Now, it turns out, waste management will also have to be moved up the priority list as well.
Surely, this calls for unprecedented collaboration on an international level over an issue that has never brought countries together before. Therefore, a lot will depend on how the world’s leading nations approach this problem.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024