Kuwait’s Transformation Pathway Toward Sustainable Consumption, Production, and Circular Economy

The State of Kuwait officially adopted all 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) in September 2015. Since then, Kuwait has been moving steadily toward achieving SDGs when the Government of Kuwait took the decision to reflect SDGs strategically and substantively in the National Development Plan of Kuwait Vision 2035 and through the implementation of several national projects, action plans, and programs. In this paper, we will present the efforts made by the Kuwait Environment Public Authority (KEPA) to lead the Government of Kuwait through setting the transformation pathways toward SDG12 “Responsible Consumption and Production” and the circular economy of the waste sector. To achieve these goals, KEPA took the initiatives and implemented two national projects. The first project “Assessment of Sustainable Consumption and Production in Kuwait-2021” conducted a systematic assessment and analysis of the current practices and patterns of consumption and production of the main economic and services sectors in Kuwait and identified the gaps and needs for their improvement and drew the roadmap for the development and implementation of a sustainable consumption and production national action plan (SCP-NAP) in the coming years to enable Kuwait to achieve SDG12. The second project “Survey and Establishment of a Comprehensive Database for Waste Management in Kuwait (eMISKWaste)” conducted comprehensive surveys of the current status quo of waste generation, collection, and disposal methods and developed the Kuwait National Waste Management Strategy 2040 (KNWMS-2040) which will assist the government of Kuwait to apply the five-stage waste hierarchy and achieve circular economy in the waste sector.