The Women-Waste Climate Nexus in the Middle East and North Africa
Delila Khaled, Founder & Principal, ImpaXusI. Executive Summary
This technical brief is a supplement to the white paper, The Women-Waste-Climate Nexus: Unlocking the potential of women entrepreneurs to combat the global waste crisis and Accelerate the Race to Net Zero (Khaled, 2023) Using the paper as a point of departure, it provides a brief analysis of the womenwaste-climate nexus in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including an overview of the regional waste outlook and the landscape of challenges and opportunities facing women waste entrepreneurs. Ultimately, the analysis underscores the white paper’s key takeaways and recommendations around the urgent need to increase understanding, investment, and radical collaboration to unlock the unique and significant potential of women waste entrepreneurs (WWEs) to accelerate progress on critical climate goals.
As the white paper demonstrates, the impact case for investing in women as drivers of inclusive, local circular innovation in waste and resources management is strong. Significant evidence shows that investing at the intersection of climate and gender will deliver outsized returns – not only in terms of financial performance, innovation, and inclusion, but in terms of co-benefits across each of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. This is no less true in MENA. However, the gap in women’s
entrepreneurship in MENA is much higher than the global average, pointing to even greater challenges in access to finance and male-dominated markets. Furthermore, women’s integration in climate action, investments, and initiatives across the region remains weak. Meanwhile, Middle East is quickly becoming one of the most prolific waste generating regions of the world. Though contexts vary widely across MENA, common challenges include a lack of awareness around waste pollution and climate change; ineffective solid waste management legislation; and inadequate infrastructure and investments. Booming urban centers and higher standards of living are contributing to greater waste generation which, when coupled with weak waste collection and disposal facilities, pose a grave and mounting
problem for municipal governments and the environment. To address the complex web of challenges at the nexus of women, waste, and climate, disruptive approaches and radical collaboration are required to overcome knowledge silos, build the evidence base, and integrate and operationalize genderinformed policies, programs, and investments.
II. Waste and Climate Change, and the Rising Role of Women in MENA
While the impacts of climate change are painfully apparent across the region – from life-threatening heat waves to water insecurity and energy shortages – the connection between the global waste crisis and climate change remains poorly understood, and even more so at the nexus of gender. Moreover, gender integration in climate action remains weak. Progress in gender mainstreaming has been slow and climate actors need to help shift from viewing women as merely beneficiaries to active partners in climate actions. While many countries have climate policies in place, civic engagement and public understanding of climate change remains limited. The same can be said of women’s economic empowerment and entrepreneurship. Despite commitments to gender equality and women empowerment, most documents have few references to women and gender resulting in a lack of operationalization. Efforts to mainstream gender in climate and finance tend to focus on short-term technical interventions, leaving deeper gender inequalities unaddressed.
Significant education and awareness raising is required to shift public and private sector perception from viewing women as climate victims, to recognizing their potential for delivering socially inclusive and innovative climate solutions that align with local needs and contexts. This entails recognizing and promoting women's knowledge, contributions, and unique strengths to accelerate progress on climate action, especially in terms of resources and waste management; as well as ensuring women’s participation in climate and resource-related decision-making processes and investments at the local and regional levels. Fundamental to such efforts is the need to increase understanding of the overlooked but inextricable connection between waste and climate change. (For a discussion of the connection between waste and climate change, please see section 3 of the white paper.)
III. Regional Waste Outlook and the Rising Role of Women Entrepreneurs
By 2050, the World Bank projects that some 3.4 billion metric tons of municipal solid waste will be generated around the world. The total quantity of waste generated in low-income countries is expected to increase by more than three times by 2050. The East Asia and Pacific regions are generating most of the world’s waste, at 23 percent, and the Middle East and North Africa region is producing the least in absolute terms, at 6 percent. However, the fastest growing regions are Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA, and South Asia, where, by 2050, total waste generation is expected to more than triple, double, and double respectively (Kaza, Yao, Bhada-Tata, & Van Woerden, 2018)
It is interesting to note that globally, richer countries produce more waste per capita than poorer countries, but typically have better waste management to help deal with these issues as a similar trend can be observed in the region. Waste generation in the Middle East and North Africa is relatively modest 2
compared with global trends, primarily due to a lower population. Many of the largest waste generators are high-income countries, mainly those in the GCC. (Ibid.)
Food and green waste comprise the predominant type of waste in the Middle East and North Africa (at 58 percent). About one-third of waste is composed of dry recyclables, and the rising recycling activity in the region reflects an increasing willingness to capture the value of these materials. A major focus in the region is on reducing food waste and addressing organic waste management. This appears to correlate with the emergence of women-led waste startups driving circular innovation in this space. A few examples include: Garbaliser in Lebanon which converts household and municipal food and organic waste1 into high-quality, affordable organic fertilizer thereby reducing emissions while improving agricultural yields and cutting the cost of agricultural inputs for local farmers; in Egypt, Fresh Source Global provides cold chain storage solutions for farmers thereby reducing agricultural food waste and related emissions, improving returns for farmers, and curbing food insecurity. (For an overview of key waste streams and how they contribute to climate change, please see the infographic in section 3, page 5, of the white paper.)
Plastic is forecasted to constitute around 9 percent of municipal waste in the Middle East and North Africa by 2025 and is likely to be much higher in large urban centers such as Cairo and Casablanca. The growing awareness around plastic pollution and the visible threat it presents has also motivated climate action and innovation among the region’s female entrepreneurs. In Dubai, for example, Palmade has pioneered the production of biodegradable cutlery from a combination of date palm leaves and biopolymer from sugar cane and soybean extract. This circular solution not only reduces the excessive reliance on single-use plastic; it also helps curb the public and environmental health threat posed by the common practice of openly burning palm tree waste2. Saudi Arabia’s Nouf AlHazmi founded the biotech startup, Plastus, which produces bioplastics from organic waste, advancing the Kingdom’s circular economy goals. These are but a few examples that point to the growing sophistication and use of technology by women entrepreneurs who are tackling waste problems higher up the waste value chain, a trend that has been heretofore largely overlooked by climate and gender actors, donors, and investors. (For an in-depth discussion of the impact case for investing in women entrepreneurs, see section 4 of the white paper.)
Single-use plastics are a major aspect of the global waste emergency. Plastic bottles, rampantly used through the MENA region, take 450 years to decompose. Globally, only 9% of plastic waste is recycled; another 19% is incinerated; 50% ends in landfills; and 22% is dumped or openly burned. Nearly two-thirds of plastic waste comes from plastics with lifetimes of under five years (OECD, 2022).
1 Food waste in landfills is responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As the organic waste decomposes, it generates methane – a key ingredient in ground-level ozone pollution. Methane is 25 times more potent than CO2 and the second-largest contributor to global warming.
2 Open waste burning poses a serious threat to public health. It generates fine particulate matter air pollution, which has been linked to respiratory illness and premature mortality. (In Cairo, open burning is responsible for up to one-third of this pollutant.)
3
An important issue to note is that the context, challenges, and capacities in waste and resources management varies widely across the region, so a one-size-fits-all approach will not suffice to address current ecosystem weaknesses. North African countries with large urban centers like Egypt and Morocco, for example, have more in common with the rest of Africa than with wealthier, smaller, and less populated Gulf States. The former have sizeable informal sectors wherein there is significant female participation, and relatively unsophisticated waste management systems and infrastructure. GCC countries like the United Arab Emirates and Oman have relatively advanced waste management infrastructure and technologies and low involvement of the informal sector. It’s also important to note that many countries face unique waste challenges. For example, the closing of Lebanon’s primary landfill in 20153, triggered a nationwide waste emergency that sparked a significant uptick in waste entrepreneurs tackling everything from plastics recycling and household waste collection to new fashion upcycling companies offering secondhand clothing and textile reuse and repair.
In each of these contexts, we are seeing the emergence of women ecopreneurs and climate innovators working at the intersection of recycling, the bioeconomy and waste reduction. As awareness around the importance of climate mitigation grows and the threat of environmental pollution grows, the region will no doubt witness further entrepreneurial growth in the green and blue economies. Interventions to support WWEs in MENA must take a nuanced approach, factoring in both the waste and gender contexts. In other words, just as WWEs are responding directly to the local socio-economic and environmental needs of their communities, the interventions and actors that support them must also take a localized approach to effectively meet their needs and maximize opportunities for growth.
IV. The Landscape for Women Waste Entrepreneurs: Key Challenges and Opportunities
Less than five percent of businesses are women-led in MENA compared to a global average of up to 26 percent (UNIDO, 2022). Raising capital remains a major obstacle for women entrepreneurs in the region. As a result, most women founders rely on their savings or family support rather than pursuing a formal source of financing. Those who do seek investment face male investor bias, which is commonplace worldwide. A recent study of the region’s gender investment startup gap revealed that a staggering 66 percent of women founders in MENA believe that investors are less inclined to invest in start-ups led by women (TiE Dubai and Wamda, 2022). This wellfounded concern stems from the fact that less than USD 50 million was invested in female-only start-ups during the first nine months of 2022, accounting for a mere 2 percent of total startup investment in the region during that period. These dismal investment
The gender-climate investment gap: Globally, less than 3% of venture capital goes to women founders and a mere 0.2 percent of climate-related overseas development assistance reaches women-led and women’s organizations.
3 In 2015, the closure of the Naameh landfill, which serviced Beirut and Mount Lebanon, the country’s most densely populated regions, triggered national protests due to massive amounts of waste piling up in the streets, in empty spaces around the city, and in already at-capacity dump sites. This gave rise to the You Stink protest movement in August of 2015, in response to the lack of government response to the growing waste crisis (Tufts University, 2023)
patterns, however, are consistent with global trends and by no means unique to the region (see text box).
While the region lags behind the world in terms of female participation in the work force and entrepreneurship, an impressive 57 percent of science, technology and engineering graduates in MENA are women, and 34% of technology-focused startups in the Arab world have women founders (Boughdiri, 2023) However, on a global scale, women entrepreneurs receive a paltry amount of venture capital funding, and even less so when it comes to climate funding (see text box).
Current climate financing for MENA is inadequate and focuses on mitigation rather than adaptation. This is true for the region in general, and especially at the nexus of climate, gender, and waste. Relatively limited climate financing is being channeled to Arab countries and even then, it is channeled into larger scale infrastructure focusing on mitigation, with very little funding reaching entrepreneurs (especially women) who are driving the kind of circular innovation needed to bolster adaptation to climate change. Furthermore, climate funding allocation across the region appears biased in general, with Egypt and Morocco receiving most of the funding while others receive little or none 4 .
Both private climate financing and gender-smart investing in the region are nascent, revealing a massive shortage in risk capital needed to unlock WWE-led innovation. With few exceptions, venture capital and private equity investors in the region have yet to adopt a climate lens; those that do, do not integrate a gender lens. The low number of women fund managers is yet another drawback (noting evidence that women investors – compared with their male counterparts – are twice as likely to invest in women founders and three times as likely to invest in companies with a female CEO (Abouzahr, 2019). (See section 4 of white paper.)
The systemic and gendered barriers that WWEs face in accessing finance may be further compounded by the social stigma around the waste sector and investors’ risk aversion toward climate innovation. This raises questions about how to make funding and financing efforts more effective and inclusive. Ecosystem builders must work with intention and creativity to overcome these critical barriers at the pace and scale needed for change. Capacity building and awareness raising among both the public and private financiers is necessary to strengthen the region's ability to address climate change and adopt gender-smart financing principles. Investors (namely, financial institutions, venture capital funds, and private equity firms) have low levels of awareness and understanding of the advantages of gender lens investing. Meanwhile, the number of women fund managers in the region remains low. The handful of exceptions that exist do not necessarily apply a gender lens; and those that integrate a climate lens tend to focus almost exclusively on climate tech (stemming from the regions’ investor focus on fintech). In addition to educating investors, this points to a need for incentives to unlock climate financing across the region.
Networking is another obstacle female entrepreneurs in MENA face, as they are often shut out of traditionally male-dominated business environments where business relationships are cultivated, deals
4 It is interesting to note, that these two countries are leading the region in adopting natural capital accounting, with Egypt using this framework to address its massive waste management challenges (World Bank, 2021)
are negotiated, and women can share the spotlight with their male counterparts. Building such networks are essential to creating the social capital to fuel collaboration and access to funding. Women also need more peer-to-peer networks, not only because they support women entrepreneurs along their journey, encouraging women to set higher aspirations for their businesses, plan for growth, and embrace innovation (Unnikrishnan, 2019). A study conducted in Turkey and four MENA countries—Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt—identified networking as the primary factor that helped women entrepreneurs overcome obstacles, such as access to capital or identifying new market opportunities (Kalafatoglu, 2017).
While significant, these gaps and challenges within the climate sector present a valuable opportunity for change. Addressing climate impacts, mobilizing resources, and building solutions necessitate a level of diversity that mirrors the range of individuals affected by the crisis.
In recent years, the MENA region has seen a rise in the representation of women in pivotal and influential roles within government and diplomacy, especially in countries like the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan. This has led to a more pronounced adoption of women-centric perspectives in green economy strategies, highlighting the importance of incorporating a gender-lens in environmental policy and action.
Similarly, the emergence of high-performing women-led ventures has been proof of the critical role women play in fostering resilience at the household level, stimulating job creation and driving economic development. For instance, KESK, which calls itself the “first Iraqi Greentech company”, synergizes green power and cloud computing technologies to build alternative energy projects and generate new revenues. Moroccan company Green Watech specializes in using energy efficient techniques to cleanse wastewater as worsening droughts deplete supplies.
The rise of women in the MENA region as pioneers of green businesses, policymakers, and entrepreneurs marks the start of a significant and promising shift that requires support and scaling through intentional changes in policies, financing, and governance structures. Recognizing and amplifying their contributions by advocating for WWE-centered ecosystems will challenge the existing norms, and most importantly, ensure that the fight for climate change and waste management benefits from a broader range of insights and experiences, ultimately leading to more sustainable communities.
I. Building WWE-centered Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystems
Given the complex and systemic problems previously cited, an ecosystem building approach is needed to address system weaknesses that impede WWEs and women climate innovators from starting and growing their businesses and testing and scaling their innovations. Entrepreneurship ecosystems in MENA are thriving in several countries (notably, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Jordan) and relatively nascent in others, especially when it comes to bolstering innovation and women’s participation. The emergence of ecosystem actors is somewhat sporadic across MENA, but indicative of a growing awareness of the impact and investment potential in the climate innovation space. A select group of new and notable ecosystem builders include: the woman-led UAE Independent Climate Change Accelerators was established to support climate entrepreneurs, bolster climate
education, and cultivate ecosystem building; CEWAS Middle East, which runs entrepreneurship programs in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq; the Posterity Institute – a think tanks focused on climate and inclusive economics – is home to the UAE Sustainability Fellowship; and, in terms of womenled venture capital funds, Amam Ventures in Jordan invests with a gender lens, and Dubai-based Venture Souq invests globally in climate tech and fintech.
Despite this positive trend, there is significant space for ecosystem building and a great need for more climate and gender lens investors. A preliminary review of the top 50 climate startup investors (angel investors and/or VC funds) in MENA revealed only one in Egypt, one in Saudi, with the remaining in nonArab countries, including seven in Turkey (Shizune, 2023).
One of the key takeaways from the roundtable discussion on the women-waste-climate nexus is the fact that the programs, incubators, and accelerators tend to focus on early-stage entrepreneurs, lack a gender-responsive approach, and are not tailored to meet the different needs of WWEs and innovators over the medium- and longer term, during challenging periods of growth, scale, replication, and even failure.
II. Conclusion
In order to enable and accelerate a gender-just transition to circular economies with zero waste and net zero emissions, climate actors and investors as well as gender actors in MENA must center WWEs in planning and decision-making processes, financing frameworks, funding requirements, as well as monitoring and reporting systems. Despite the complex and challenging landscape, there is enormous opportunity for investment and impact at the nexus of gender, waste, and climate in MENA. Women entrepreneurs across the region are taking on the region’s leading waste challenges, driving circular innovations that solve for local waste problems, decentralize supply chains, generate livelihoods, and protect human health and the environment. Driven by both social and environmental concerns, they are actively addressing the region’s predominant waste streams, launching successful enterprises that focus on recycling, food and organic waste, and the production of bioplastics.
III. Preliminary recommendations
In alignment with the overarching recommendations suggested in the white paper, "Unlocking the Potential of Women Entrepreneurs to Tackle the Global Waste Crisis and Accelerate the Race to Net Zero," the preliminary recommendations below list the next steps needed to support women entrepreneurs in the waste management sector. These recommendations emphasize the pivotal role women can play in fostering sustainable solutions, driving innovation, and propelling the world towards a net-zero future. By incorporating gender-inclusive strategies and promoting women's leadership in waste management initiatives, the proposed recommendations aim to not only address the immediate challenges within the sector but also to harness the untapped potential of women entrepreneurs as catalysts for transformative change on the journey towards environmental sustainability.
Further study of the women-waste-climate nexus in MENA is needed to build the evidence base to attract investment and inform programming and policymaking.
Support key climate, gender, and waste stakeholders (donors, philanthropies, investors, development finance institutions, climate funds, NGOs, etc.) to integrate a climate-gendercircularity lens in programming, policies, and investments.
Prioritize climate resilience in governments and policymakers’ strategic agendas, recognizing the integral role of waste management in long-term stability and economic prosperity. This includes embedding climate and waste considerations into broader policy frameworks and ensuring that climate finance is protected and prioritized.
Adopt blended finance solutions leveraging the growing interest of Arab philanthropies in the climate space to develop public-private-philanthropic partnerships that can unlock first-time financing and increase the flow of adequate risk-capital capital to WWEs.
Identify and support early interest and opportunities for academic study in circulate innovation, resource recovery and waste management among young women students and aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators. Demystify waste as men’s work and tackle the social stigma around waste sector work through public education and awareness raising.
Convene and collaborate with emerging leadership in the ecosystem including entrepreneurs, accelerators and incubators, early-stage capital programs, fellowships, fund managers, fellowship programs, academic and research institutions, donors, philanthropies, civil society.
Provide pathways of support tailored to the differing needs of entrepreneurs, from early-stage to scale and growth.
Bolster the visibility, appreciation, and understanding of the contributions of women entrepreneurs working in resources and waste management.
Educate climate actors and investors on the co-benefits of gender-lens investing.
Provide tailored technical and financial support to women-owned enterprises growing businesses that integrate and generate jobs for informal sector workers.
Encourage cooperation and collaboration among countries in the MENA region to pool resources, share knowledge, develop joint initiatives addressing shared climate challenges, and create a path to scalability for climate initiatives.
Establish monitoring and evaluation frameworks to continually assess the social, economic, and environmental impacts of climate finance initiatives, ensuring they contribute to the intended goals of better waste management, and stronger promotion of women-owned enterprises.
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