Access to energy is considered a key factor in development and progress. Especially in informal settlements, provision of energy can be challenging. Alessandro Galimberti outlines how Public Private Partnerships that include local CSOs have been key to solving this problem in many of Brazil's favelas.
To achieve sustainable integrated waste management, municipalities need to move away from end-of-pipe approaches. What is rather needed are softer approaches that set incentives for sustainable waste management at an early stage of waste handling.
The large amount of electronic waste is a serious challenge in Lomé, Togo. At WoeLab, tech-savvy young people come up with solutions that clean the environment, ensure recycling of electronic waste, and educate residents on how to manage and valorise their electronic waste.
While Nigeria has made a leap in access to information communication technology (ICT) and the Internet in the past two decades, many of its residents still depend on imported used electrical and electronic equipment (UEEE). Since many of them turn out to be waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), they worsen the challenge of electronic waste management. Prof. Oladele Osibanjo and Dr. Innocent Nnorom discuss this trade along with its environmental and human health implications.
In Bamenda, Cameroon, municipal waste management remains blind to how gender roles shape waste generation. Hedwig K. Ngwa Akum analyses how bridging the gender gap between waste generation and waste management would improve sanitation in the city.
In Brazil, Latin America’s largest country in terms of population, the City of Sao Paulo is committed to recycle organics. In 2015, the City embarked on a journey towards separate collection of organics, thus enabling the production of high-quality compost.
Plastic pollution is an enormous environmental problem around the globe. It is only through the creation of functioning local and global circular economies that the problem can be solved. Doug Woodring, founder of Plasticity Forum and Trish Hyde, founder of The Plastics Circle, suggest a 5-point-plan to optimise plastic's Second Life potential.
In order to save energy and resources, and to prevent waste from harming the environment, recycling is not enough. Cities should try to avoid waste production altogether, argue URBANET authors Carina Koop, Jennifer Schinkel, and Henning Wilts.
Cape Town is committed to providing clean, affordable and accessible energy to all its residents. Increasing the use of renewable energy, implementing innovative financing options, and challenging national energy legislation are some of the ways the city hopes to shift away from a history of inequality, writes Mary Haw.
By increasing the share of renewables in Nigeria’s energy production, a growing urban population will be able to attain energy supply and greenhouse gas emissions will go down, says author Ifeoma Malo from Power for All.
In precarious working environments, cooperatives hold an immense potential to increase social and economic inclusion of marginalized groups. Sonia Dias uses the examples of waste pickers cooperatives to illustrate how the concept of cooperatives helps implement the four pillars of the International Labor Organisation’s Decent Work Agenda—and calls on policy makers to create a favourable environment for this organisational form.
In the Bulgarian capital city of Sofia, many people prepare pickled vegetables (zimnina) for the winter months. This widespread practice touches on basic service issues like water and energy supply, as well as food provisioning for the city’s most vulnerable residents, explains Ralitsa Hiteva from the Resnexus project.
This April, the second Nexus Conference will focus on the links and trade-offs between water, energy, and food—the “nexus”—in urban areas. Cities are at the forefront of the climate challenge and the heart of the global economy, so they are critical to implementing an integrated approach to meeting the SDGs and building climate resilience.
What are the linkages between solid waste management and urban health? And how can city governments improve waste management systems to reduce health risks? On the occasion of World Health Day, URBANET talked to Graham Alabaster, Chief of Sanitation and Waste Management at UN-Habitat.
Traditional cooking stoves consume a lot of energy and emit harmful fumes, leading to high rates of premature deaths. Improved cooking stoves are addressing this issue, making it possible for poor households to save money and reduce illnesses related to emissions. Looking at the example of Maputo, Mozambique Rosario Loayza and Alessandro Galimberti explain the benefits of such efficient kitchen appliances.
