Amarriage of convenience between an international environment Non Governmental Organisation, the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA) may have been struck.

The relationship nay partnership may be in the area of manpower development, waste-to-wealth and provision of equipment.

The relationship is a product of the adoption of Lagos in 2006 as a member of the 40th cities in the world that generate ozone depletion substances.

The city was adopted to initiate interventionist measures that will reduce ozone depletion substances.

The CCI launched in August 2006, the Large Cities Climate Initiative to encourage cities to take steps to increase efficiency and reduce emissions by using more energy efficient lighting for traffic and street lights; building codes and practices that make use of more effective insulation, more energy efficient windows, more energy efficient heating, ventilation systems and lighting; and more energy efficient municipal water and sanitation systems.

Recently, LAWMA got a reprieve from the state government, as it upped the authority budget for waste management to six per cent of total recurrent expenditure for the state from the previous two per cent and LAWMA hopes to increase it to 12percent in 2010. LAWMA is currently drawing from a $200m facility put in place by the World Bank to the state government for infrastructure development. The agency’s share of the facility is being used to purchase new waste evacuation trucks, develop more landfill sites and development of the human capital.

The foundation also hopes to encourage cities to localise cleaner electric generation systems; use of bio-fuels or hybrid technologies for city buses, garbage trucks and other vehicles; schemes to reduce traffic congestion; reduction of emissions from city garbage dumps and the use of biomass to generate electricity; and more intelligent design of electric grids both across the city and within office and municipal buildings.

Despite of all these assistance LAWMA currently has 350 ramshackle trucks for its waste evacuation, but to effectively manage waste in the state a minimum of 500 trucks are daily needed.

The Managing Director, LAWMA, Ola Oresanya disclosed this to journalists in a presentation to members of team from Clinton Climate Initiative in Lagos recently, adding that the authority has an efficiency level of 100 trucks to work with on a daily basis.

He however said that LAWMA would build three new transfer stations this year.

Mr Oresanya therefore implored government to promulgate studies that would Identify benchmark for the emission control, intervene in the institutionalisation of all government ministries and agencies involved directly in the tackling of climate change, more capital investment in the waste management sector i.e development of new land sanitary land fill sites, investment in best practice for disposal of hazardous, health care and e-waste and more investment in the development of four more compost plants in the city.

Other area of intervention, he stated includes development of more refuse transfer loading stations within the three geopolitical zones of Lagos.

Said he: “Presently, Lagos commits about 6percent of its recurrent expenditure to the upkeep of the solid waste facilities. The capital input through infrastructural support will enable the state to double its commitment to the MSW sector and thus enhance the support towards the reduction in ODS, creation of jobs, poverty reduction, technology development and improvement in the sanitation of the city.”

According to him the projected recurrent expenditure between 2007 and 2011on household waste collection, landfill management, TLS management, public waste management, public waste collection, sweeping, operation cost, incidentals and contingencies is in the region of N48billion thus translating into about N1billion per month.

In his words on the CCI team’s visit the managing director said “they are here right now to see things first hand, to conduct their own study and to look into areas where they can actually invest in supporting Lagos in waste management programmes.

“The support is both technical and financial. They have come to see what we have on ground. They need to be convinced that we have the right structures that will manage the level of interventions. It goes to say their intervention will not be technical alone but monetary. Don’t forget that in Lagos we still need a lot of interventions financially. Like I told you the state government increased the waste management budget by over 100percent this yea. The first time waste management is having one of the highest investments under this administration. The World Bank, USTDA and CCI are investing and deciding to invest in LAWMA with the aim of ensuring that the wellbeing of the citizens of the state is assured as well as ensuring the city of Lagos becomes saner for habitation.

“CCI manages different interventions by different cities in the world. It starts by ensuring experience sharing among cities of the world. All CCI is doing is to ensure that projects and plans that will reduce carbon emission are supported worldwide, thus Lagos needs aggressive campaigns in favour of waste management like the federal government campaign against HIV\AIDS in the country.”

He stated that Lagos contributes to the global climate change from human development and industrial activities in the area of waste management, flood control, coastal erosion and industrialisation.

Local initiatives for reduction of the ODS include improvement in the municipal waste collection through partnership with the private sector, a total of over N4billion capital investment from the private sector invested directly in waste collection in the last four years in the state, government investment in the waste collection sector in the last 8years is about N9billion and capital N27.5 in recurrent.

“The investment accounted for significant improvement of about 75 percent efficiency in waste collection in Lagos i.e a significant increase from 30percent in 1999 to 75 percent in 2007. To further reduce the ODS generation at the disposal site, the state government is currently partnering with American firm, Messr Earthcare Incorporation, who is investing about 20million dollars in compost production. The plant requires about 1,500 metric tonnes of MSW\day, but is currently being serviced with 500 metric tonnes per day, plastic buy-back programme is ongoing whereby youths are engaged to bring in plastic trash and get paid by weight.

Accordingly, Lagos is the only state in Nigeria to participate in the Kyoto pact on methane gas capture by endorsing a trading agreement with the IBRD recently, the LAWMA boss submitted.he international development partner, such as World bank (IFC) and the USTDA also signified interest in the development of solid waste management facilities, which will definitely reduce the production of ODS in the landfill sites, monthly community sanitation programme for mass education and awareness on community hygiene.