Professor David C Wilson gave the keynote presentation to open the Intersessional Conference on Building Partnerships for Moving towards Zero Waste, held in Tokyo, Japan from 16 to 18 February 2011. His subject was ‘Acting Alone to Partnerships – Strategic Approach for Sustainable Municipal Waste Management’, in which he drew in particular on his recent work for UN-Habitat. The conference contributed to deliberation on the theme of Waste Management at the 19th session of theUnited Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in May 2011, which in turn will feed into the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012. DCW’s presentation is now available.
The Tokyo conference was organized by the Division for Sustainable Development (DSD) of the United NationsDepartment of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), in close collaboration with the United NationsCentre for Regional Development (UNCRD) and the Ministry of the Environment Japan.
The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit. The CSD meets annually in New York, in two-year cycles, with each cycle focusing on clusters of specific thematic and cross-sectoral issues: solid waste management is one of the current themes, as outlined in the multi-year programme of work (2003-2017)(E/CN.17/2003/6).
CSD-19 is the policy session where intergovernmental decisions are made on policy options for overcoming obstacles and challenges in solid waste management, while taking into account lessons learned and best practices in relation to the theme. The Tokyo conference aimed build on the outcome and recommendations of the CSD-18 (review session) as well as the “International Consultative Meeting on Expanding Waste Management Services in Developing Countries,” held in March 2010 as an intersessional meeting for CSD-18.
The February 2011 conference brought together relevant stakeholders (including representatives from cities, public waste utilities, private sector, key research and policy institutes, community-managed waste management programmes, and international institutions, among others), to discuss possible policy recommendations that would contribute to expanding waste management services in developing countries. The conference aimed to identify constraints and obstacles in the implementation of waste management policies, and to explore ways and means in which these stakeholders could partner with each other to strengthen their collaborative efforts to deal with growing waste management challenges in the perspective of ever increasing urbanization and consumption trends.