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Summary: In September 2000, 189 member States of the United Nations signed on to the Millennium Development Challenge which calls for meeting the Millennium Development goals by 2015 (Exhibit 1). In September 2002, at the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development, several goals were adopted which lead to the Commission on Sustainable Development adopting a multi-year program of work, again through 2015 (exhibit 2). Again in 2002 at the Monterrey, Mexico summit on Funding for Development, the US pledged to double foreign assistance through a new Millennium Challenge Account which is managed by a new Millennium Development Corporation. What are the opportunities for compost and composting to play a major role in meeting these challenges? How can the compost community organize to see that organics recycling solutions are fully used?

The Global Challenge Suppose the all nations agreed to educate children, provide clean water and sanitation, fight disease, reduce maternal mortality and promote gender equality, eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and do this while promoting sustainability and reversing the loss of environmental resources? Sound utopian? Not only did all 189 members of the United Nations agree to this agenda, but, as you can see in exhibit 1, they set quantifiable targets for each goal and the developed countries have begun to work out a partnership with developing countries to achieve those targets. For US citizens, this global agenda promises a vast expansion of those who can afford to buy US goods; reduced health threats from round the world; and reduced threat to security as the number of those who feel they have nothing to lose is cut in half.

The Johannesburg Summit, a follow-on to the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, resulted in a new emphasis on achieving results. In addition to a focus on the wording of resolutions, this summit produced a mechanism for coalitions of the willing—governments, corporations, and non-governmental organizations—to agree to specific time frames to achieve specific results. Examples of these coalitions of the willing and their commitments can be found at www.state.gov/g/oes/sus/pr and www.csd.org. This stemmed from a frustration with global governance where environmental ministers could find themselves attending nothing but international conferences to develop wording for global environmental resolutions. The United Nations Environmental Program has been burdened with perfecting the language of 500 different environmental resolutions with the result that resources were largely not available for implementation. The demand for attention to stronger language in resolutions versus emphasis on implementation promises to be an ongoing struggle.

Another tussle in the lead up to the Johannesburg Summit was interest in indicators of progress. The G-77—the world’s poorest countries—allegedly objected to such measures as unfairly spotlighting their shortcomings. Interestingly, each year UNICEF produces the “State of the World’s Children” with many statistical tables. Exhibit 3 is a Top 40 created from UNICEF’s latest report which ranks the countries of the world on the basis of highest child mortality rate—the number of children per thousand under 5 years old who die of preventable causes in the reference year (2002 for exhibit 3). Those preventable causes are largely those issues addressed by the Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations Development Program “Development Report” each year offers data on all the countries of the world. The Top 40 countries include Iraq and Afghanistan.

Opportunities for Compost and Composting

Organic materials abound around the globe. In 1993 I encountered waste from a 10,000 hog cooperative in the Ural mountain region of Russia going to a combined municipal wastewater plant managed by the local steel mill. When wastes from the coking operation killed all the microbial life in the plant, a disaster requiring shut down and clean out of the plant in other circumstances, the wastes from the hogs rejuvenated the plant which reportedly never was shut down! This alternate use of organic material is one of many. Energy is in great demand. Direct application of organics to crops is popular. In India during my stay from 1988 to 1992, one used iodine solution on all vegetables in honor of widely used nutrient sources. I asked my colleagues in Russia about using a compost berm to clean up runoff from lands contaminated by steel plant wastes. The answer was that the compost would be stolen as it is widely known to be effective on crops. Yet little or none was produced. I saw lots of clouds of black smoke traveling around India from open burning of organic residuals.

Jim McNelly describes possible innovative uses of organic wastes from pig and chicken cooperatives, municipal solid waste rich in vegetable scraps, and human wastes. Greenhouses could be heated, burgeoning demand for horticultural products could be better served, and the mortality rate for trees planted to prevent erosion in northern China could be reduced to close to zero from the “no compost in the root ball” rate of about 90 percent. Yet the local river was the repository of much of that unused resource. On a hopeful note, China is considering using compost in the root balls of the 10 million trees it plans to plant for the 2008 Olympics.

Bangladesh regularly endures flooding made worse by severe deforestation. Landmines in Mozambique, carefully identified by national demining efforts, were moved to new locations by flooding. Draught and flooding are expected to be worsened as global warming advances. Schemes to use compost to create constructed wetlands which give floodwaters a place to go are a clear alternative to barriers which channel even higher water levels. Some 2.4 billion people have inadequate sanitation. Compost toilets, even in urban and suburban areas, promise solutions without the need for lots of pipes, treatment plants, and arguments about uses of sewage sludge. The story of Dr. Josephina Mena’s demonstration in Mexico is a case in point. Local women who administered the program of compost toilets gained sufficient recognition, because of drastically lower rates of gastroenteritis and because the safe nutrient allowed a rebirth of local agriculture, that local politicians tried to stop the project but were forced by popular demand to let these potential power brokers get on with lowering the gastroenteritis rate in the town from 90 percent to about 2 percent! While organic resources in developing countries go unused, here in the US much of our billion tons a year of animal waste makes its presence felt in unpleasant ways. Instead, compost could be exported to countries trying to find organic nutrient for crops destined for the European market. Imagine a US foreign policy based on US compost solving massive erosion and flooding problems around the world!

Promoting Organics Recycling Solutions

A little bit of USEPA money and an enormous amount of energy and expertise from Rod Tyler have moved compost use on US highways from “its not in the DOT specs” to widespread recognition as the best practice for erosion control. A little more USEPA money and enormous energy and expertise from Ron Alexander have made compost a respected, known product. Recently I visited a team at FortBelvoir who develop better ways to detect and destroy landmines. Every year, practitioners from countries working on the landmine problem gather to discuss technical difficulties at a conference held by these FortBelvoit experts and the agenda for improving landmine detection and destruction is revisited. The US Compost Council’s internet discussion group brings to bear US expertise on composting issues and some questions from other countries are addressed. The generosity of these volunteer efforts and the willingness of the US compost community to share information with those struggling with organics recycling solutions is unquestioned.