Associate Professor Iftekhar Ahmed presents at the Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction
The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), a key partner through the University’s Pacific Node initiative, recently ran a partner event on ‘Disaster Waste Management for a Resilient Pacific’ at the Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (APMCDRR) in Brisbane.
The APMCDRR is a major event organised by the United Nations every two years, with more than 3,500 participants from the Asia Pacific region attending this year.
SPREP presented its different disaster waste management initiatives in the Pacific region, including the project, ‘Drafting of Practitioner’s Guideline and Introduction of Systems to enable Pacific Islands to effectively manage Disaster Waste’ undertaken by the University of Newcastle Disaster and Development Research Group, led by Associate Professor Iftekhar Ahmed.
The work is part of the larger EU-funded SPREP PacWaste Plus project, in partnership with the National Disaster Management Offices and Department of Environments in Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu.
The project builds on a training course delivered in Vanuatu in 2019 with SPREP and JPRISM II following the publication of the training handbook, ‘Disaster Waste Management in Pacific Island Countries'.
The team will produce a final report of guidelines from the findings of the project, supported by instructional videos, that will be disseminated to Pacific nations. The guidelines will be the basis for future training and capacity development initiatives.
The event raised awareness for policy makers and disaster management officers in the region on how critical proper waste management is and how it can improve the capacity of Pacific Island Countries to prepare for emergencies and disasters to ensure timely and effective response and recovery.
Including the University, other partners of SPREP at the event were the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Ministry of Environment of Vanuatu.
A/Prof Ahmed was invited to join as a panellist at a panel discussion at the conference and received an award from SPREP on behalf of the University of Newcastle team for his leadership in disaster waste management research.
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