The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last month brought together dignitaries, diplomats, activists and business leaders from 192 nations. While the Lebanese government contingent at the conference was led by Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, among those representing Lebanon’s non-governmental organizations was Wael Hmaidan, executive director of IndyAct. Executive spoke with Hmaidan during the conference to hear his views on the negotiation process and its implications for the Arab world.

• How is the negotiation process going and have there been any significant breakthroughs?

Negotiations seem to be heading toward a greenwash scenario, which is a suicide deal for all countries. The nations that are participating in the negotiations are not showing much ambition: developed countries are on one hand refusing to adopt the much needed and necessary measures to rein in global warming, on the other hand, developing countries are not pushing for a more stringent approach, fearing that any possible deal may have a negative impact on them.

An agreement has been reached on a possible emission reduction of 17 percent (relative to 1990 levels) by the year 2020 for developed countries,  and 14 to 15 percent for developing countries. This figure falls far behind the 40 percent drop in carbon emissions recommended by the scientific community. Ideally countries need to funnel $200 billion of annual aid into a special fund destined to help developing countries curb their carbon emissions; only $10 billion have been offered on a yearly basis for the next three-year period.

• Will Lebanon benefit from such a fund?

As a developing nation, Lebanon will certainly benefit from such a fund in terms of technology transfer penned by any possible agreement. However the issue at stake is much more important, we are talking about the future of the country. Lebanon is threatened by severe desertification, which would leave residents scrambling for water and food supplies.

• Is Lebanon actively participating in the Copenhagen negotiations?

Negotiations around climate change have been going on for years during which Lebanon has, for the most part, been a silent participant. Lebanese delegates sit like students in a class, listening to the various interventions without voicing their concerns. Although Lebanon is a small country it should be pushing for more measures that would allow for the survival of the planet. As an example, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives has shown great leadership in defending the climate change cause. Lebanon is part of this planet and, like other countries, it will be significantly affected by global warming.

• What is Lebanon’s contribution to global warming?

It contributes some 0.07 percent of the total value. However, it is nonetheless one of the highest per capita contributors.

• How serious is the impact of global warming on a country like Lebanon and on sectors such as agriculture?

Climate change threatens human civilization at large when a stable climate system is modified beyond its tipping point. The short-term impact can be felt on sectors such as agriculture, with farmers facing more frequent droughts and subsequent shortage of water, which might lead to desertification. This will reflect on agricultural output, which will naturally fall. We are also witnessing changes in soil quality and the appearance of new diseases and pests, which are attacking plants.

In the long run, sea levels are likely to rise, destroying coastal

areas used for agriculture.

Some seasons will be longer — namely the summer period — and will also be dryer.

Precipitation and distribution patterns are changing, causing floods in certain areas that are followed by very dry seasons. Frost is also occurring out of season, which is another contributing factor for the decrease in agricultural output. Due to the rise in temperature levels, the natural line of trees will move higher. To respond to this trend, farmers will rely more on chemicals and fertilizers thus contributing to increasing toxicity levels in natural produce.

• Is the government taking any measures to counteract the effects of global warming on Lebanon?

No real action has been taken by the subsequent governments, except in the Hermel area, where terraces which catch rain water have been built. This particular project has been financed by the UN. 

• How are other Arab countries faring?

Egypt, which is tackling the climate change issue very seriously, has certainly taken the regional lead in the Copenhagen negotiations. Other countries like Saudi Arabia are being very proactive but in a negative manner. The Saudi kingdom considers climate change as a threat to oil trade and has raised doubts as to the validity of climate change theories while attempting to obstruct the negotiation process.

• Do you believe that Lebanon and other Arab countries should be concerned by the issue of climate refugees?

The issue of climate refugees is only one dangerous aspect of the global warming problem, which is very complex and has many implications for the region.

• Have China and the United States — the two main CO2 emitters — adopted more proactive stances toward climate change?  

The US is part of the problem underlying the negotiations deadlock. Although President Barack Obama seems to be serious about the issue of global warming, he lacks the support of the American Congress. He has come up with CO2 reduction figures that are better than the ones proposed by former president George W. Bush, but they remain insufficient on the broader scale of things. Conversely, China has adopted a very flexible stand toward the climate change issue.  

• There seems to be a growing opposition between blocs representing poor countries, which are adamant that rich nations commit to emission cuts beyond 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol and the developed nations, which are pushing for a new agreement that would replace the protocol… Do you believe that the two-track approach could be a possible solution?

The two-track approach is not something new and has been underway for more than a few years. Kyoto was adopted in 1992 with the exception of the United States and some other developing countries. These countries that are out of the Kyoto Protocol have now joined the negotiations, which makes the two-track approach a growing reality for most.

December was a month of oscillating emotions for the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, and for all those who followed the events of the fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP15) on climate change. Though hopes were high going into negotiations, in the final stages, as developed and developing countries showed increasing intransigence over key demands, even the modest achievement of a non-binding political accord seemed to hang in the balance.

Arab states were divided over their stances on a final deal in Copenhagen. Oil producing states, such as Saudi Arabia, would see major falls in revenue if countries committed to a significant reduction in their use of fossil fuels.

The group Arab Environment Watch quoted Mohammad al-Sabban, the chief Saudi negotiator on climate change issues, as saying that “such a development could squeeze trillions from the kingdom’s future oil revenues.” Saudi Arabia has stalled negotiating on fuel emission caps in the past, according to the non-governmental organization IndyAct, and said that they would not participate in a climate change deal if their lost profits were not compensated.

However, the region is also among the most vulnerable to the future effects of climate change in terms of risks to water scarcity and land loss due to rising sea levels. This fact has prompted some countries, like Egypt, to push for far stronger measures than have been seen in the past.

High hopes, low expectations

After the failure of the 1990’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and a lack of commitment to the 1997 Kyoto Accord, the world looked to Copenhagen with a mixture of skepticism and desperation — skepticism that, after two and a half decades of squabbling, world leaders could make a meaningful and abiding commitment, and desperation that the last best chance to curb climate change might pass unrealized.

Seeking to head off potential failure, world leaders, meanwhile, were downplaying the significance of the event.

“Going into Copenhagen there was a concerted effort on the part of many governments, especially those in developed countries, to drop expectations,” said Uygar Ozesmi, executive director of Greenpeace Mediterranean, who attended the conference. “Parties were pushing for a politically binding, rather than legally binding agreement.”

A politically binding agreement would operate similarly to the Framework Convention as a declared commitment to a set of principles, and would carry many of the same problems in terms of monitoring accountability, he added.

Developing nations, unified in a bloc known as the Group of 77 (G-77) and headed by China, advocate for a legally binding convention that would commit developed nations to deep cuts in emissions by 2020. For their part, developing nations would commit to significantly slowing their emissions with the help of a large financial and technological aid program supplied by wealthier nations.

Yet even from the outset, it seemed apparent that a legally binding document was still out of reach. A few days before the Summit opened on December 7, Egypt’s Ministry of Environment issued a document predicting that Copenhagen would fail to set meaningful targets, according to Egypt News. The report added that an all out failure was preferable to producing an accord that lacked the power to hold nations accountable for specific emissions reductions. 

“The best we can expect is a political declaration. We’re very disappointed,” said the Maldives Environment Minister Mohamed Aslam, speaking before the summit.

Developed nations, and the United States in particular, have advocated market-based mechanisms — giving industries a financial incentive to lower emissions, and using the profits to combat climate change in other ways — such as a carbon tax or “Cap and Trade” as an alternative to strict legal commitments.

These two groups found themselves in increasingly isolated camps in the weeks leading up to Copenhagen. The main issues dividing them, in terms of actual commitments under an agreed-upon protocol, were a demand from developing nations for funding, and a demand from developed nations for greater transparency and increased international oversight of emissions reduction programs.

Earlier this year, African nations requested between $400 billion and $500 billion in aid annually to be provisioned to developing nations in order to combat the effects of climate change and improve infrastructure. Some months ago, the European Union stated that it would be willing to contribute to a fund of around $150 billion. By the time of the Copenhagen Summit, developing countries had lowered their demand to $140 billion. 

“$140 billion is not such a big number when you consider what it is intended for,” said Ozesmi. “After all, the world spent trillions of dollars to rescue banks and financial institutions during the financial crisis. Considering we are talking about the rescue of the planet, the necessity is really incomparable.”

“Climate change has a financial dimension as well,” he added. “The economist Nicolas Stern, who is well respected internationally, has predicted that climate change could lead to a decrease of as much as 25 percent in global GDP. That’s not a financial crisis – that’s a meltdown.”

On December 17, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US would be willing to contribute to a $100 billion per year aid package. She warned, however, that the contribution would only come if concessions were made from developing nations — and China in particular — to increase transparency of their emissions-cutting programs and the aid expenditures. China had argued that increased oversight of its programs would stand in violation of its sovereignty.

“Climate change could lead to a decrease of as much as 25 percent in global GDP”

The public voice, raised in protest

While leaders remained in deadlock, activists from around the world converged on Copenhagen, numbering in the hundreds of thousands during the final days of the summit. In demonstrations that spilled into several highly publicized altercations with Danish security forces, advocates voiced dissatisfaction with the summit’s lack of progress and what they saw as a lack of substance in debated targets.

Most demonstrations were peaceful, and took the form of mass marches and protests. When he spoke to Executive, Ozesmi was engaged in the eleventh day of a hunger fast, in solidarity with 10,000 others across the world, to protest what he saw as a failure on the part of world leaders.

“Even though I am an environmentalist, and have worked to advocate combating climate change, I still felt I had to do something more,” he said. “By fasting, we remind our leaders of the impacts that climate change will have on world hunger. Currently 300,000 people a year die of hunger due to famine, and by 2030, because of climate change, that number will rise to 500,000.”

“Reaching a consensus in Copenhagen is a matter of morality, of ethics,” he added. “Failing to do so turns a blind eye on the future and robs us of our dignity.”

Last ditch effort

By the final day of negotiations, tensions were running high in all camps. Two weeks had passed with next to no progress made towards a consensus. Clinton’s offer had opened a crack in the deadlock, but the conditions of that offer — that developing nations accept monitoring and an exchange of information — were unmet.

That morning, US President Barak Obama arrived in Copenhagen to deliver America’s final offer. Expectations for Obama were high — many saw his arrival as the last possibility to push through a meaningful compromise.

Speaking from Copenhagen on Friday morning, just hours after Obama’s arrival, Edgard Chehab, manager of the United Nations Development Program in Lebanon’s Energy and Efficiency unit told

Executive that the US president “had not come to leave in failure.”

Yet Obama was on rocky ground, both abroad and at home. America’s commitment to combating climate change was called into question by the previous Bush administration’s outright denial, in Kyoto, of evidence linking climate change to human action, and the international community has retained a degree of incredulity despite the new president in the White House.

Domestically, Senate republicans have threatened to veto any form of climate change spending.

In the first hour of his arrival he met with high-level leaders from 20 nations in a closed-door session of negotiations. Speaking shortly after the session, President Obama’s tone contained a note of frustration, indicating that progress was still stalled.

“At this point, the question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart; whether we prefer posturing to action,” he said.

China, meanwhile, stressed that it would continue to work towards emissions cuts of 40 to 45 percent by 2020, but said it would do so voluntarily, and not because it was constrained to do so by an international agreement.

“We have not attached any condition to the target or linked it to the target of any other country” said Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. “We are fully committed to meeting or even exceeding the target.”

Arab states, represented by the Committee of Arab Ministers of the Environment, took a similar stance.

“Their position was joint and straightforward,” said Chehab. “Arab states are not major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and aren’t responsible to the same degree as, say, the US or China. Still, many are prepared to do what it takes to reduce their emissions.”

“The Saudi Arabian delegation, for instance, said here in Copenhagen that they are putting billions into research and development with the goal of producing half of their energy through renewable resources within the next 10 years,” he added. This is despite Saudi Arabia’s long history of stalling or rejecting international commitments on climate change.

“Arab states are not major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions…still, many are prepared to do what it takes”

Mixed success

What might be described as a murky breakthrough came in the final hours of negotiations. A draft finally agreed upon by China, the US and the majority of other states contained no surprises, but embraced a number of important clauses and compromises, including a monitoring mechanism to oversee emissions cutting programs and a commitment to the $100 billion in annual aid by 2020. Even so, the document, called the Copenhagen Accord, falls far short of the binding treaty many hoped for in the weeks and months leading up to the summit.

Advocates and some world leaders expressed disappointment with the draft, which they said lacks the teeth to sufficiently combat the effects of climate change.

Others hailed the final draft as the “first best step” in what will certainly be an ongoing struggle to combat climate change. Copenhagen is by no means the end of the road. The next talks are scheduled to convene in Mexico in a year’s time.

As world leaders assemble in Copenhagen to tackle the gradually encroaching threat of climate change, Lebanon itself stands at the crossroads of two very different futures. In one, appropriate and timely action is taken to reduce human contribution to the phenomenon; global warming abates, or at least slows; weather patterns stabilize; and what minimal changes occur to regional geography and weather patterns are met with carefully-planned mitigation measures and stable infrastructure. This is the best case scenario.

The risks of inaction

Now consider the worst: internal division and transnational rivalry stall meaningful action in Copenhagen and beyond. As the earth’s population booms, the desire for short-term profits outweighs concern for long-term consequences, and the energy industry expands its operations to meet public demand with ever-increasing use of oil and coal. As climate change escalates towards a point of no return, Lebanon’s abundant yearly rainfall occurs with greater intensity, washing away topsoil and draining into the sea before the earth has time to absorb it. Rising sea levels encroach on coastal cities and salinate groundwater reserves, while inland, aquifers dry up from overuse. Hurricane winds, the product of drastically oscillating temperatures, whip up dust storms in fields where crops once grew, now turned into desert. And from the Gulf, a region even more susceptible to the impacts of climate change, a steady press of displaced humanity comes crowding at Lebanon’s doorstep.

These two visions represent extreme ends of the spectrum of possibilities. Most experts project a future that is somewhere between the two, witnessing effects that are serious, though perhaps not catastrophic, and in which Lebanon must take concerted steps to meet an increase in temperature and reduction in water supplies.

Moderating consumption

The threat of climate change has not been lost on the Lebanese government, said Antoine Ghorayeb, head of the Awareness Department at the Ministry of Environment.

“We are aware that climate change will require both mitigation and adaptation measures on the part of the government, particularly with regards to the agricultural sector, which will be most impacted,” he said. “To this end the Ministry of Environment has designated a National Authority on Climate Change, to study the causes and consequences of the phenomenon and recommend necessary measures.”

The focal point of the authority will be the recommendations and targets of the Kyoto Accord, to which Lebanon is party, he said.

Though Lebanon is only responsible for a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions, that small percentage is due to the country’s relatively small size, and not a serious nationwide commitment to reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Currently the country produces 97 percent of its electricity by burning petroleum, according to a report published by engineer Chafik Abisaid in cooperation with the Lebanese Center for Energy Efficiency and Planning. Add to this the country’s robust transportation sector, another major consumer of fuel, and Lebanon appears a long way from meeting the Kyoto Accord’s target of reducing emissions by 5.2 percent by 2012.

If anything, demand for energy — and with it, fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions — are set to rise. Julien Feghali, president of Schneider Electric, wrote in an email message that “the demand for energy in the region will double by 2020; in Lebanon an average of 5 percent growth per year in electricity demand… The installed capacity in Lebanon is of 2.3 gigawatts; there will be a need for one additional gigawatt.”

If serious changes are not made to the way energy is produced in the country, it would mean the energy sector would have to augment fuel consumption by roughly a third.

Feghali pointed out that while a shift to renewable energy is one of Kyoto’s objectives, it may not be the immediate answer to Lebanon’s own fuel consumption issue. Instead, he argues for an economization of energy and higher efficiency standards for the way energy is used.

“Today, renewable [energy sources] remain less cost-efficient and more difficult to use than oil, gas, and coal,” he wrote. “This means that figuring out how to use less energy is important to our quality of life. Conservation and efficiency are key to meeting the energy needs of our world today and in the future.”

“Conservation and efficiency are key to meeting the world’s energy needs today and in the future”

When it rains, it pours

When it comes to developing solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, time may not be a luxury the world, and the Middle East in particular, can afford. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that average temperatures in the Middle East will increase 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, and that regional water supplies could see a reduction by as much as 20 percent.

These figures differ for Lebanon, but reports tend to project a mean temperature increase of between 0.9 and 1.8 degrees Celsius. One study, co-authored by Mutasem el-Fadel, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the American University of Beirut, projects that the ratio of renewable water (primarily collected rainfall) to per-capita consumption will decrease by around 18 percent, due both to an increase in population and a decrease in trappable precipitation.

This will put additional strain on Lebanon’s population, and the rural agricultural sectors in particular. The problem is less with a reduction in rainfall as with a narrower timeframe in which the rainfall occurs, said Edgar Chehab, energy and environment program manager of the United Nations Development Program  (UNDP) in Lebanon.

“Rain flow is becoming increasingly problematic as a result of climate change. While Lebanon’s rains have always occurred primarily during the winter months, now they are arriving with greater intensity during short amounts of time,” he said. “This means that the earth has less time to absorb and retain the rains, which flow directly into the sea.”

Testifying to Chehab’s statement, Lebanon’s precipitation levels as of December 21 were 462 milimeters, amost double the usual monthly average for December of 256 milimeters, according to the Nicholas Chahine Meteorology Center in Beirut. 

A 2004 report by Fadi Karam, head of the Department of Irrigation and Agro-Meteorology at the Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute, pointed out that climate factors interact with other human actions to worsen the situation.

“Reduced vegetation cover, due to deforestation, overgrazing and low rainfall, as well as poor surface management of cultivated lands have led to reduced infiltration rate” — that is, the amount of rainfall retained by the soil — “increased runoff and soil erosion, and a decline in groundwater recharge,” the report read. “The extent to which the deterioration in hydrology is reversible with improved land management…is now becoming a critical issue…[with effects on] agricultural activities, which are extremely sensitive to the large year-to-year climate fluctuations that are observed.”

Water runoff can be controlled through relatively simple means, said Chehab, as long as those means are implemented under a coordinated strategy. One such strategy would be to improve the country’s irrigation systems, which divert rain water to crops and away from densely inhabited areas where flooding poses a threat to property damage.

Excess rainwater could also be diverted to water traps — pits lined with imperforated material — there to be stored for later use. Such measures will be critical to managing the increased intensity of rainfall which experts predict will accompany climate change.

However, critics say little has been done to improve or repair the country’s water management infrastructure, much of which was destroyed during the 2006 war with Israel. When flash flooding caused thousands of dollars in damages to property in the Northern Batroun region this September, Member of Parliament Antoine Zahra criticized officials at the time for a lack of preparation, warning “the merciless winter will soon come and we should be prepared so as not to drown in similar problems.”

Lebanon’s precipitation levels as of December 21 were almost double the normal monthly average

Unseen repercussions

While some effects of climate change — such as increasingly extreme weather patterns — can already be witnessed on land, the impact of global warming on Lebanon’s coastal waters could be even more profound, and is probably much less understood, said Garabed Kazanjian, oceans campaigner of the Lebanon branch of the international non-profit organization Greenpeace.

“While most of our predictions are speculative, we do know that the Mediterranean basin is an extremely delicate ecosystem because it has been isolated — both from temperature fluctuations and non-native species — for a long time,” he said. Climate change could disrupt that balance dramatically, as water temperatures and salinity rise, he said. These factors would disrupt the deep seabed life that makes its home on the Lebanese coast, and could affect migration patterns of fish species that have historically come to the Levantine basin to spawn. In addition, aquatic life would face previously unseen competition from alien species once held at bay by the Mediterranean’s colder water temperatures. 

Lebanon’s future in terms of climate change, and that of the region as a whole, remains murky. What seems certain is that the coming years will see the consequences of our past, and that these consequences will have to be met with careful planning and mediation. The severity of those consequences may well hinge on world leaders  establishing — and abiding by — a new approach to energy consumption following last month’s Copenhagen summit. Curbing climate change will be a global undertaking, and Lebanon, though a minor player, has to commit to do its part.

Much of the country’s water management infrastructure was destroyed during the 2006 war with israel