“Informal Settlements: Climate Champions, Urban Recyclers, and Waste Managers”
Sunday, January 29, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. (Cairo time), at the French Institute of Egypt
Abstract
Informal settlements in megacities have become home to millions of informal recyclers. The connection between public health, clean cities and the places where these people live have become inextricably intertwined. In Cairo, this connection has shaped the city’s waste management sector, the livelihoods of the city’s waste workers, their enterprises, their role in the formal recycling industry, and their impact on the environment and on global warming. Urban upgrading of those informal settlements where recyclers live cannot be decoupled from policies addressing the city’s waste sector, the country’s poverty sector, and the global debate on climate.
Laila Iskandar
CID CONSULTING | Co-Founder
Former Minister of State in the Government of Egypt
Dr. Laila Iskandar was the Minister of State for Urban Renewal and Informal Settlements in Egypt from July 2014-September 2015 and Minister of State for Environmental Affairs from 2013-2014. Prior to holding public office, she was a leading member of civil society both nationally and internationally, working with youth, women and children in livelihood programs in informal urban settlements and deprived villages in Upper Egypt. CID Consulting was awarded the “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 2006 at the World Economic Forum by the Schwab Foundation. She studied economics, political science at Cairo University, Near Eastern studies and international education development at UC Berkeley, California and Columbia University, N.Y (Doctorate in International Education Development).
She has been working with the informal waste recyclers/collectors of Cairo since 1983. CID Consulting is currently working on plastic neutrality issues and climate change designing partnerships between multinationals and informal waste recyclers.
“Midan Mounira” is a series of monthly conferences for the general public led by Egyptian, French and international specialists, organized jointly by the French Institute of Egypt (IFE), the CEDEJ, the French Institute of Oriental Archeology (Ifao) and the Institute Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (Idéo) around the theme: “Egypt and the Middle East – Dynamics, challenges and temporalities”
** الندوة مترجمة فورياً من اللغة العربية إلى الانجليزية **
