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Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

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Disaster waste management contingency planning in coastal cities in Fiji and the Philippines (Action 4.2.1)

The management of disaster waste is a necessary task in the early phase of disaster recovery (Asari et al., 2013). In catastrophic disasters, such as 2013 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the amount of waste generated can overwhelm local capacity to handle the waste, affecting other tasks such as rescue operations and delivery of humanitarian aid. It can take weeks or months to dispose of disaster waste, possibly due to underestimation or lack of estimation of the amount of waste that particular natural hazards such as earthquakes, flooding, and typhoons, can generate. As a consequence, disaster waste management can consume a significant portion of the disaster recovery cost. However, pre-disaster planning and capacity-building can result to cost effectiveness. Funding mechanisms, institutional arrangements, and assignment of roles to various stakeholders must be in place in advance to enable sound disaster waste management that can result to cost and time savings and recovery of resources for recycling.