Waste and Climate Change Activities in China - October 2010
Municipal waste is a huge issue in China; the country's skyrocketing urban wealth has brought an equally sudden jump in waste generation, and government officials are scrambling to figure out what to do with it. The newest “solution” is to build dozens, if not ultimately hundreds, of municipal waste incinerators—a plan which threatens to double the world’s ambient dioxin levels if completed. For this reason and many others, they are intensely unpopular with local communities, who are fighting them tooth and nail. Where they are installed, the incinerators compete directly with informal sector recyclers. China has more of these grassroots recyclers than any other country in the world, and increased incineration would threaten their livelihoods on a massive scale.
The presence of UN climate change negotiations in Tianjin, China, in October 2010, provided a wonderful opportunity to bring together three budding streams of GAIA’s work: a growing network of Zero Waste organizations in China; connections with grassroots recyclers around the world; and efforts to rectify global climate policy and redirect subsidies from “waste-to-energy” towards Zero Waste.
Wuhu Ecology Center, a close GAIA partner organization, hosted a two-day workshop in Beijing for about 35 members of the China Waste Incineration Network. We were able to introduce them to the climate change negotiations, analyze the relationship between waste management and climate change, and have fruitful discussion about the actual and potential relationship between waste pickers and Zero Waste. This last conversation benefited significantly from the presence of representatives of the Alliance of Indian Wastepickers and of Liwen Chen of Green Beagle, who has begun to analyze the informal recycling sector in Beijing. Another focus of discussion was the CDM’s support of waste incinerators in China – since China has the unhappy distinction of being home to the majority of CDM-backed waste incinerators. The workshop laid useful groundwork for future collaborations in waste and climate, and in organizing wastepickers.
From there, the GAIA/AIW/WEC delegation shifted to Tianjin, the site of the UN negotiations, where we set up shop under the banner of the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers and Allies. These negotiations were smaller and less hectic than the big ministerial sessions such as Copenhagen and Cancun, giving us the opportunity to engage a larger audience more intensely. In addition to our official program – a prominent booth, a press conference, and an official side event – we had one-on-one conversations with official representatives of more than 20 countries as well as scores of unofficial, NGO, youth, and other delegates. Our press work was fruitful, with a long story appearing on the global AFP wire, as well as considerable local and Chinese national coverage. A demonstration we held within the official UN venue, in particular, attracted television coverage.
