Joint Programme on Waste SDG Indicators - Global Monitoring and Capacity Development for Sustainable Cities and Circular Economy

This event will showcase new alliances aiming at better monitoring of SDGs related to waste management and circular economy, as well as capacity development for using waste statistics methodologies.

Another 2.5 billion people could be added to the urban population by 2050. This would lead to a rapid increase in urban solid waste generation estimated to double by 2025.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development introduced in September 2015 includes goals and targets to address waste management issues, with a set of indicators to measure the achievement of targets. These include:

§ 11.6.1 Percentage of urban solid waste regularly collected and with adequate final discharge with regard to the total waste generated by the city

§ 12.4.1 Number of parties to international multilateral environmental agreements on hazardous and other chemicals and waste that meet their commitments and obligations in transmitting information as required by each relevant agreement

§ 12.4.2 Treatment of waste, generation of hazardous waste, hazardous waste management, by type of treatment

§ 12.5.1 National recycling rate, tons of material recycled

There is a lack of internationally agreed waste definitions and methodologies combined with a difficulty in capturing informal activities at all stages of waste management. UN Environment and UN-Habitat, custodian agencies for the waste SDG indicators, collaborate to develop coherent monitoring methodologies and call for efforts in capacity development for future monitoring. Based on results of the 1st Expert Group Meeting for waste-related SDG indicators, examples and approaches for monitoring waste-related SDGs will be presented, and possible synergies with efforts to improve waste management and climate change mitigation will be discussed.