The waste management sector accounts for 5-15% of human-made climate impact. Growing amounts of mismanaged and uncollected waste are rapidly increasing the sector’s total negative impact on climate, environment and health. Our goal is to increase municipal solid waste collection rates in low and middle income countries, as currently 1 in 3 people globally have no access to waste collection services. To achieve this goal we are building a global action network - a new type of organisation, that is neither government, nor business, nor civil society, but a structure that combines the resources and competences of all of these.

Samudra will:

1. develop and support peer-like relationships among funders (e.g. IGOs, development banks), problem-owners (e.g. national and city governments, companies), methods leaders (e.g. research centres, companies that design and build infrastructure), capacity developers (e.g. waste management companies, NGOs) and other stakeholders. We will focus on stakeholders that are the most motivated to overcome waste management challenges and that are in the strongest position to implement changes on a global level.

2. facilitate the development and implementation of a global waste management strategy in full technical detail and ensure that the strategy keeps evolving along with changing circumstances, instead of becoming outdated.

3. act as a global orchestrator to develop synergies between different efforts (especially those that don’t agree with each other), making them complementary. Such a stewardship organisation is necessary to amplify the positive impact of all stakeholders and to identify and address gaps, duplications and conflicts that impede the change on a global level.