Despite Covid-19 outbreak, CLIMA project partners managed to host the first International Forum on municipal waste management online. The meeting saw the presence of the representatives of all partners involved in the project, that is to say the main beneficiary (Sestri Levante Municipality, Italy) along with Mahdia Municipality (Tunisia) and Bickfaya Municipality (Lebanon), the Tunisian International Center of Environmental Technologies (CITET), the Lebanese NGO Arcenciel and the Italian one, COSPE.

The Forum main aim was to promote communication and advocacy activies involving representatives from both civil society and stakeholders in order to receive feedbacks and recommendations on the analysis of the current Municipal Waste Management Plans (MWMP) of the three municipalities involved in the project; analyse good practices in the three countries and support in building a participatory M&E tool to help citizens and stakeholders in monitoring each municipality activity concerning waste management. The group discussed the actions to be implemented in the advocacy plan: the activities will be tailored on each country needs in order to simplify the procedural system and to promote CLIMA project at all levels while following a common plan on which partners will discuss periodically. 

This was the last meeting to be held in order to officially close the International Forum that each country developed autonomously. Project partners took the occasion to compare strengths, weaknesses and opportunities related to Municipal Waste Management Plans (MWMP) by submitting the feedbacks on the three forums held autonomously in Italy, Tunisia and Lebanon. At the end of the presentations, a work group was organised to discuss which outputs could be borrowed from one country to another to inspire or bring innovation. The most relevant outputs were:

• Monitoring of the MWMP in Mahdia, which could be an inspirational model for the collection system Lebanon promoting the development of a participated tracking system 
• Cooperating with the private sector and start-ups that could support the work of Bickfaya municipality, in terms of load and diversification of actors and capacities
• Simplifying the procedural system and increasing the Municipality income to increase the autonomy of the municipality at the same time
• Promoting the autonomy of the management of the organic
• Cooperating with the private system for the management of solid recyclable waste
• Organising technical meeting involving civil society in order to have a comprehensive analysis of the waste management plan
• Engagement of the civil society both for the monitoring of the MWMP and for the choice of the pilot neighbourhood for the collection 
• Engagement of children and young students through raising awareness activities in schools and universities

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