Building Resilience Through Disaster Waste Management—UN Environment’s Experiences and Approaches

Abstract

Integrating disaster waste issue is a critical component of making humanitarian action fit for the future, anticipating global risks and challenges such as increased vulnerability due to climate change and environmental degradation. This requires a fundamental shift towards a model that not only strengthens the response to crises but also learns and adapts in order to anticipate and act before such waste garnered. This article conducted analyses on the characteristics of disasters in the past two decades. Uncertainties confound disaster waste management, including the timing and magnitude of each disaster, and the amounts and types of waste that will be generated. For these reasons alone, disaster waste management must be an integral part of development planning and processes. Making 10 years since the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, this article highlights that disaster waste management is not only debris clearance or waste management following a disaster, but also includes prevention and pre-disaster preparedness aspects in terms of enhancing resilience of local communities. Such ' mainstreaming” ensures that disaster waste management (DWM) will be treated as a priority issue, on an ongoing basis. Based on UN Environment’s experiences and approaches, this paper emphasises that preparedness is the key, and that priority should be accorded to integrating disaster contingency planning in national and city level waste management strategies as well as mainstreaming waste management issues within broader disaster preparedness and response plans and actions. It is envisaged that the issues presented and the gaps identified in this paper will provide a basis for future comprehensive and cohesive research on disaster waste management. In turn, this research can lead to better preparedness and response on disaster waste management.