Participants from various Pacific countries have benefitted from a virtual Disaster Waste Management workshop designed to allow them to share experiences and lessons learned in disaster waste management. The workshop, which was held on 8 December 2022, was organized by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) through the ‘Committing to Sustainable Waste Actions in the Pacific’ (SWAP) project in collaboration with the J-PRISM II Project and the PacWaste Plus Programme.

The workshop brought together speakers from Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu, and 18 participants were able to learn about preparedness for minimizing disaster waste generation and were informed on the safe handling and storage of disaster waste. They also learned the importance of collaboration and coordination in managing disaster waste and the need for effective planning and preparedness.

SPREP’s Director of Waste Management and Pollution, Mr. Anthony Talouli, highlighted the importance of the workshop, stating that "the impact of disasters to our GDP is very significant as it can set us back billions of dollars every year in terms of development, so the significance of the workshop is very high."

The workshop was structured into three sessions, with the first session introducing documents with a regional scope such as the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific and the Disaster Waste Management Guideline. The second session focused on national activities in Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu, and the third session focused on sharing knowledge on how to strengthen good practices.

You can find more information on the workshop on the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) SWAP Project website, and a video recording of the workshop can be found on their YouTube page.