GAIA Releases Guiding Principles for Decision-Makers Today
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 4 December, 2023
Dubai, United Arab Emirates– Today, world leaders gathered for the second annual Methane Ministerial at the global climate summit (COP 28). The event marks the second year since United States Climate Czar John Kerry announced the launch of the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to reduce methane emissions–a greenhouse gas over 80 times as potent as CO2– by 30% by 2030, and showcased global progress toward that goal.
Since COP26, the Global Methane Pledge (GMP) has generated unprecedented momentum for methane action, and over 150 countries have signed on to date. However, climate activists around the world are urging leaders to abide by environmental justice principles to rapidly reduce methane emissions from the waste sector by scaling up proven organic waste management strategies rooted in EJ principles, with demonstrable co-benefits for livelihoods, quality of life, governance, and community health.
“Environmental justice principles are often neglected in waste management approaches, exacerbating social divisions and excluding critical stakeholders, especially in the informal sector, which can lead to false solutions like waste incineration to take root,” says Mariel Vilella, Global Climate Program Director at Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). Environmental justice is a key part of ensuring methane reduction solutions are fair, just, and sustainable in the future.”
Today GAIA released Environmental Justice Principles for Fast Action on Waste and Methane, a resource for policymakers that provides guidance on how to craft programs and policies for tackling methane that can also help address interconnected equity issues that currently plague our global society.
The resource centers around five principles, which were developed in consultation with movement leaders from over 40 countries:
- Respect planetary boundaries to ensure intergenerational equity: when it comes to waste, this means following the waste hierarchy, meaning giving priority to waste prevention, giving discarded materials the highest and best use and phasing out waste disposal technologies such as landfilling and incineration.
- Respect for all waste pickers and waste workers: Waste pickers and waste workers must have a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between a hazardous livelihood and unemployment.
- Enhance inclusion and build from local knowledge: public policy impacting waste management must recognise and incorporate the expertise of local organizations and actors, including the informal sector, add value to existing local work, and be accessible to all.
- Respond to pollution and environmental harm with accountability: Any pollution or environmental harm caused must be addressed, putting means in place to compensate for damages and prevent further harm.
- Support holistic solutions through systems change: A systemic point of view must be used to find solutions for interrelated crises like climate, public health, poverty, gender, racial and class injustice, inequality, conflict and war, and to ensure solutions in the waste sector meet and exceed Sustainable Development Goals and climate targets.
GAIA members attending COP28 have first-hand knowledge of how to put these environmental justice principles into practice in cities around the world–with striking results.
For example, the National Movement of Waste Pickers (MNCR) has worked for over two decades to organize and empower waste worker cooperatives in Brazil to increase waste diversion, and as a result waste picker-operated composting systems generate three to five times more jobs than landfills.
Trivandrum (India) has become a model in decentralized solid waste management for methane reduction since closing their landfill in 2011. The city’s local task force collects 423 tons of waste daily, predominantly organic, from households for source-level composting, and provides accessible facilities for organic waste. Trivandrum has also introduced India’s first “Green Protocol” to minimize waste, driven by youth volunteers.
Yobel Novian Putra, GAIA’s Global Climate Policy Officer, states: “By centering environmental justice principles, communities across the world have not only slashed their methane emissions, but their citizens are healthier and more empowered, waste pickers and workers have jobs with dignity, and communities are more climate resilient.”
Press contacts:
Claire Arkin, Global Communications Lead
claire@no-burn.org | +1 973 444 4869
Note to the Editor:
The Environmental Justice Principles for Fast Action on Waste and Methane was launched in an official COP 28 side event on December 4, and featured speakers from across the globe with first-hand experience putting the principles into action in their communities. A recording can be found here.
For more information on waste and climate, visit https://www.no-burn.org/cop-waste-and-climate/
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GAIA is a worldwide alliance of more than 1,000 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries. With our work we aim to catalyze a global shift towards environmental justice by strengthening grassroots social movements that advance solutions to waste and pollution. We envision a just, zero waste world built on respect for ecological limits and community rights, where people are free from the burden of toxic pollution, and resources are sustainably conserved, not burned or dumped.