Little has improved in Lebanon since Executive’s last year-end report on the environment in December 2010. Air quality continues to deteriorate, urbanization advances almost totally unchecked and water resources remain poorly managed; and these are only a few of the steadily growing ecological problems the country faces. For years, one of the major problems present in addressing Lebanon’s many environmental issues has been the near total lack of reliable and current data. It has been more than a decade since the last comprehensive report on the environment here was released, so perhaps the most substantial development of 2011 was not an innovative field project or the passing of new environmental regulations, but rather the publication of a 355-page report titled “State and Trends of the Lebanese Environment 2010”. The report, released in July by the Lebanese development firm ECODIT, was compiled with the assistance of the Ministry of Environment (MoE)
