ENVIRONMENT-MALI: Women Declare War on Garbage

By Almahady Cissé Reprint | | Print |

Almahady Cisse

BAMAKO, Jun 25 2002 (IPS) - Women in Mali have declared war on garbage, an eyesore trash, which they have described as an enemy of the environment.

“It’s time to act and save our environment,” says Traore Nene Toure of the Coalition for the Environment and Sustainable Development of the Mali Co-ordinating Committee of Women’s Groups and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

“This year, our goal is to get women involved in managing waste,” she says.

Toure took part in the Annual Environmental Fortnight event — titled ‘I Share in the Responsibility for Damaging the Environment – I Need to Create Less Garbage’ — held in Mali on Jun 2-17.

During the event, participants, especially those from the urban areas, took part in awareness sessions and educational programmes on how to control and manage garbage.

According to the latest study — conducted in 1999 — by the National Directorate for Pollution Cleanup and Control, the volume of household garbage in the district of Bamako varied between 1,500 and 2,000 cubic metres annually. The total household waste products alone represented 99 percent of the district’s total garbage, said the study.

The rate of garbage production averages 0.5 to one kilogramme per person per day. This yields an annual rate of 231 kilogrammes of solid waste per person per year in the Bamako area, whose population, according to the 2001 census, is 1.016 million. In all, some 234.696 million kilogrammes of garbage are generated in Bamako, the country’s capital, each year.

These alarming figures motivated women’s groups to organise a campaign to get rid of the mountain of garbage pilling in Mali.

Soumaila Berthe, head of the training department at the National Directorate for Pollution Cleanup and Control, says “Women must be involved in environmental management because they too contribute to environmental degradation.”

“Women must play a major role in fighting environmental degradation,” she says.

Diarra Oumou Keita, president of the Malian Anti-Pollution Groups, says “An unhealthy environment is caused by a lack of civic responsibility, a lack of monitoring mechanism, and a lack of government support.”

Noel Diarra, president of the Bamako-based Environmental Rights Network, says enforcement of Article 15 of Mali’s constitution would resolve many of the country’s environmental problems.

Article 15 stipulates that “all people have the right to a healthy environment. The protection and defence of the environment, and promotion of quality life, are government’s, and everyone’s, responsibility”.

“Although it’s true each political party has a secretary for environmental affairs, we have to acknowledge that environmental problems are not a priority for any party,” says Mamadou Cissoko, who is in charge of environmental affairs for the opposition National Renaissance Party.

The economic costs of disease linked to poor sanitary conditions was estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1999 to be two billion CFA (around 2.857 million U.S. dollars), or 0.16 of Mali’s gross domestic product.

Mali’s population growth (more than 3 percent) and the rapid, and often poorly planned urbanisation of its cities poses serious environmental problems for the vast semi-arid West African nation of 1.240 million square kilometres. Mali’s population is about 10 million.

Soumaila Cisse, former Minister for Territorial Planning and Environment, blames Mali’s environmental problems on “the challenge of dealing with urban waste”.