Priority Areas

Chemicals play a key role in agriculture, health and almost every aspect of modern industries, while they also pose potentially great threats to a healthy ecosystem and human health. Illicit and improper use of hazardous chemicals is still on-going, and lack of awareness in handling pesticides and herbicides is an issue for many communities. Improper management of municipal and solid waste, incineration and uncontrolled dumping continues to release harmful chemicals into the environment with negative consequences for both people and the ecosystems they rely on. Chemicals and waste constitute a major threat to human health particularly in low to middle income countries like Eswatini, mainly due to the lack of waste management infrastructure and awareness. Communities empowered with knowledge, funding and technical support can identify and implement effective local activities to avoid, reduce and phase out the use of harmful substances and manage the resource flow to waste in a circular system.

The Eswatini Environment Fund (EEF) provides financial and technical support to communities and civil society organizations for addressing national environmental challenges, while also promoting poverty reduction and sustainable development.  In the chemicals and waste priority area the following projects may be funded: supporting organic farming as an alternative to using harmful pesticides and herbicides, community recycling project, community waste management project, reduction of waste through segregation and compost production.

Projects in this sector that have been supported by the Fund in the past include

• Youth led waste recycling business.
• Provision electronic waste sorting equipment for youth associations