Climate Change Blog: Uganda Municipal Waste Compost CDM Programme.
This Blog outlines a registered CDM small scale programme of activity in Uganda towards municipal waste composting. This programme will be introduced by the first time in the country with the support of the World Bank, the government of Netherlands and the government of Uganda including its National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) which will provide technical and financial support to the municipalities to set up and operate the facilities of small-scale waste composting of activities.
The location of activities will be within 56 districts of the country or any new districts that may be constituted in future, including Kampala. The starting date of the programme was 31 October 2007 and it will last for 21 years.
Uganda´s local urban body will manage improvement of its waste collection systems within the municipal area. The wastes collected would be transported to the compost facilities, where it will be aerobically composted. The compost will be sold, recyclables will be removed and sold, and the rejects from the process would be disposed off at the landfills/disposal sites.
The technology for solid waste composting is new in the country, another benefit is the fact that, the municipalities of Uganda are extremely resource constrained and most of their budgets are not funded through local taxes but funded by the state. Hence the waste compost facilities are sustained from the revenues generated from sale of compost and from the sales of emission reductions.
In Uganda there are no specific regulations that mandate waste composting until now. Before the CDM programme there was no municipal waste composting activity in practice. Moreover other waste management problems have been highlighted before this programme have started, which were:
- Lack of equipment, such as, skips, skip loaders, refuse dumpers.
- Budget constraints.
- Lack of sensitization, no sorting is done by the communities.
- Skips not efficiently used.
This facts shows the importance for the additionally of a CDM initiative towards waste management in Uganda.
In relation to vulnerability to Climate Change it can be demonstrated by the percentage of Uganda´s population living in cities which is 12 % of the total population and by the fact that the municipal councils can receive typically about 70 tons of waste per day.
One of the significant environmental concerns of the growing urban areas has been the management of municipal solid wastes, because many of the landfills sites are located adjacent to wetlands. The wetlands thus get contaminated by the leachate generated from the landfills after rainfalls which as result emits a large amount of methane into the atmosphere.
Therefore recovering the organic matter from municipal solid waste as compost can avoid methane emissions. Nonetheless the major quantity of waste reaching the collection site is organic in nature in Uganda. Thus the aerobic composting of the waste stabilizes and minimizes local pollution and completely eliminate the production of methane.
The Uganda´s CDM waste composting programme is also contributing to a sustainable development of the country by generating local employment in the environmental field in connection with this programme implementation.
However there are some drawbacks in order to make this programme more sustainable which is the fact that only 10% of farmers in Uganda utilize fertilizers. The use of fertilizers in Uganda is amongst the lowest in the world. According to the “Uganda Fertilizer Strategy 2006 Draft Report” it is estimated that between 1996 and 2000, fertilizer usage was 0.37kg/ha, compared to 4kg/ha in Mozambique, 6kg/ha in Tanzania, Malawi 16kg/ha, Kenya 31.6 kg/ha, South Africa 51kg/ha. Therefore there is a major need to promote the use of organic fertilizer out of waste compost in the country.
Nevertheless, Uganda´s Municipal Waste Compost Programme wants to serve as a model for other programmes that will promote sustainable waste management practices. Up to now the Uganda´s National Environment Management Authority has signed a co-operation agreement with the municipalities in two phases. The first phase was signed in 2005 with the nine municipalities of Mukono, Jinja, Mbale, Soroti, Lira, Mbarara, Kasese, Kabale, and Fort Portal. The second phase was signed in 2010 with eight municipalities of Masindi, Busia, Hoima, Mityana, Entebbe, Arua, Gulu and Tororo. This municipality cooperation Agreement set out the rights and obligations of each party in terms of the CDM waste compost programme activities.
References:
SMALL-SCALE CDM PROGRAMME OF ACTIVITIES DESIGN DOCUMENT FORM (CDM SSC-PoA-DD) Uganda Municipal Waste Compost Programme. Version 1.6 Date : 2009-06-24
2 comentarios /
22 Feb 2012
por
Patricia Perez Costa
IMSD /
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