Oh Canada: meet the Jordanian dump your dollars helped rebuild

[In November, Canadian ambassador Alexandra Bugailiskis and UNDP administrator Helen Clark visited Jordan’s second-largest landfill, Al-Akedir, which serves one million residents including many Syrian refugees./Flickr]

Forget for a moment that Canada has ended air strikes in Syria. Forget for a moment that the True North has accepted 25,000 Syrian refugees for resettlement. Instead consider landfill. Because Michael Callan would like you to know that a garbage dump may prove to be among Canada’s most crucial contributions to Jordan, a country with more than 600,000 Syrian refugees. And the Trudeau government could duplicate the model as it embarks on “capacity building” in the Middle East.

Callan, Global Affairs Canada’s Director of Development for Middle East & North Africa, doesn’t mince words: “It’s not a sexy thing to champion solid waste management. But it’s the right thing to do. It’s where Canada should be,” he told Yahoo Canada News during an interview at the Canadian embassy in Amman, Jordan, this week. After a beat he added, “It decreases pressure on municipalities therefore decreasing pressure on Syrian households and on Jordanian households. And it leaves something behind.

"We can’t do humanitarian assistance and wait to start on development work until suddenly peace rings out across the land,” Callan said. “Then it’s too late.”

What on earth is he talking about? Between 2010 and 2014, Jordan’s second-largest landfill called Al Akedir, located on near its border with Syria, became strained after hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees arrived in the region. Solid waste increased by 50 per cent.

It was already the landfill for 30 municipalities, roughly 100 towns and included waste from factories, waste-water facilities, slaughterhouses and olive oil plants. Now with one million people, waste was not being treated properly. Put simply it was overflowing and was a stinking mess — an environmental hazard.

Jordan has a stable, functioning government but it needs a boost to its infrastructure because the population has surged so quickly; close to 80 per cent of refugees don’t reside in camps but in towns and villages.

"The real burden on the country is in the communities themselves. In the public schools and the public medical clinics. They struggle alongside each other and use the same water services and electricity and the landfills. And that’s where Canada is turning its attention,” Callan said.

In 2015, Global Affairs (formerly the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade), worked with UNDP Jordan on a “resilience program” to rehabilitate the Al Akedir site. The goal was to leave behind a municipal infrastructure that will put the region and government in a stronger position long after a conflict passes, Callan said.

“We are also addressing the potential for tension between a host community and the new arrivals because you don’t want one community getting things where others don’t.”

So far, Callan said, they’ve built a new, lined landfill that doesn’t leach toxins into underlying aquifers; and they will introduce composting and recycling programs. They want to create jobs for “waste pickers” who used to mine the old landfill and sell items they discovered. They will be given protective gear. Perhaps this new dump won’t be as much of a headache as the old one.

In February when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced $270-million for “capacity building to Jordan and Lebanon” it was the Liberal party’s updated version of the resilience program.

“There is a lot of jargon,” Callan said, but “capacity building means training. We are doing the same development work.”

Jargon aside, capacity building is useful because it provides funding to host communities in the Middle East for social services programs, health and education. It seems to be a quietly efficient way of addressing future migration. As opposed to suggesting to Syrians they aren’t welcome in Canada.

“What we keep hearing is that people don’t want to leave Syria. It’s their home,” Callan said.

As of December 2015, there were at least 6.6 million Syrians displaced internally and 4.8 million registered refugees between Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, according to UNHCR and Syria Regional Refugee Response.

Asked about Immigration Minister John McCallum’s announcement that Canada might double its intake of Syrian refugees to 50,000 by the end of the year, Callan noted that, “When he [McCallum] was here last [in December 2015] he was saying it could be upwards of 50,000. So, we’ll see.”

With that in mind, Global Affairs is working on sustainable development programs that might help Syrians stay in the region should they wish to return.

Programs include:

· A new three-year development program for Lebanon related to the Syrian crisis. The pillars are economic growth and education; and social services. They are working out the details.

· As there is no teacher certification in Jordan, they are providing training for 8,000 teachers over three years through the Queen Rania Teacher Academy.

Capacity building encompasses humanitarian aid, development aid and military aid.

Callan confirmed that the Department of National Defence (DND) has previously worked with Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF) to prepare for and manage chemical and biological attacks and provided support on border control.

“We have had technical assessment missions from DND out here recently speaking with JAF to see how they can best be of help. It could include a big training component.”

And Capt. Kirk Sullivan, a spokesperson for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) wrote in an email: “The CAF’s engagement with regional partners is critical to preventing the spread of violent extremism.

"The CAF participate routinely in whole-of-government efforts to build capacity among regional partners by providing assistance in areas such as military intelligence, operational planning, and ethics and leadership.”

Callan added: “The word of the day is integration. Whatever we do on the development side is proceeding hand in glove with what we do on the security and stabilization side. That applies in Iraq, Lebanon and here in Jordan.”

He explained that every country in the region has its own plans on how to respond to the Syrian crisis and they are usually created after needs assessments with the UN and various NGOs.

“But a lot of the needs are similar. Addressing the pressure on municipalities is key. Pressure on education is key. Livelihood needs — jobs — are increasingly important.” Callan added, “The Al Akedir dump is one of our flagship municipal services projects. It’s not high profile but every Canadian should be proud of it.”