In their most basic elements, humanity and the natural environment share a common foundation. While the environment and its resources can be harnessed, overexploitation and degradation must eventually take a toll on human life too.
As the first decade of the 21st century comes to an end, those costs are becoming evident. Car exhaust thickens the air we breathe. Industrial waste poisons the water we drink. In the Mediterranean, overfishing threatens what once seemed a boundless source of food. And year by year, the specter of a slowly warming planet looms larger, its dangers fully recognized if not yet fully understood.
Though set within relatively limited boundaries, Lebanon’s environment is characterized by a diversity of geographical zones: from its coastal beaches to the peaks of Mount Lebanon, from the fields of the Bekaa Valley to the banks of the Litani River. In a region marked by a scarcity of natural resources, Lebanon enjoys a relatively mild climate, plentiful rainfall and a number of fertile agricultural zones. Yet these advantages are not without limit.
Pollution and overuse of key resources degrade the country’s ecology and impact the human life tied to it.
To a certain degree, these costs are quantifiable. In 2004, the World Bank, along with the Mediterranean Environmental Technical Assistance Program (METAP), published a report estimating that in the year 2000, environmental degradation costs in Lebanon — primarily in terms of public health costs, but also taking into account prospective revenue, either from impacted industry or loss of productivity — amounted to some $565 million, or around 2.8 percent of the nation’s economy. The report, The Cost of Environmental Degradation (COED), also points out that due to limitations in existing data, the above figure is likely an underestimation of the true costs of environmental degradation.
Invisible threat
Water resources lead METAP’s list of impacted areas, with degradation costs estimated at $175 million in health related expenditures. Every year, contaminated or unsanitary water leads to sickness and even death, particularly in rural communities where adequate water treatment facilities are often absent.
Children, who are particularly susceptible to infection, are the hardest hit: the report notes that 10 percent of all child deaths in Lebanon result from diarrheal disease directly linked to unsanitary water, sanitation and hygiene.
Contamination isn’t the only threat to Lebanon’s water. Though it is often identified as a water-surplus country in a water-deficit region, Edgar Chehab, energy and environment program manager of the United Nations Development Program in Lebanon, told Executive that long- term water security should be a matter of major national concern.
“It’s a myth that this country has limitless water reserves,” he said. “The truth is, we barely have enough to meet our present needs.”
Lack of water management, particularly with regards to the run-off following Lebanon’s heavy rainfalls, means that the vast majority of Lebanon’s “water surplus” runs into the sea instead of being absorbed into underground aquifers, he said.
This causes water shortages and erosion of topsoil, weakening growing conditions in Lebanon’s agricultural sector. Without an adequate water management system in place, farmers draw on dwindling underground reserves to irrigate their crops.
As a basic formula, the system is unsustainable, Chehab said, adding that unchecked, the current pattern could lead to increased water shortages and desertification.
Though other sources contested the severity of Chehab’s estimate, few argue with his prediction that these problems will increase in coming years, as climate change alters the region’s weather patterns.
A 2001 report by Fadi Karam of the Department of Irrigation and Agro-Meteorology at the Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute, notes that in the latter part of the 20th century, Lebanon’s water systems were marked by a number of detrimental changes, including lower ground water levels, disappearance of certain springs and wetlands and a cessation of certain rivers — including the Litani — during dry seasons.
Paradoxically, these changes have been accompanied by an increase in rainfall, said Chehab. The ecological danger lies in the rainfall’s frequency and intensity: the last decades saw rains occur with greater intensity in a narrower window of time, meaning less time to absorb into groundwater reserves, and higher degrees of runoff and topsoil erosion.
Solid waste management in Lebanon
Lebanon’s annual environmental damage costs (2000)
Going green or going greenhouse?
Beside implementing an appropriate water management strategy, there is little Lebanon can do to mitigate the effects of climate change in the short term. Climate change — the accelerated warming of the planet due to the build-up of greenhouse gasses trapped in the atmosphere and shifts in meteorological patterns that result — is reaching all corners of the globe, and stems from collective practices; namely, the world’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels for energy.
The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions originate in the burning of coal and gas, and the drive to shift to clean, renewable energy sources has become a global undertaking.
Though responsible for only around 0.07 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, Lebanon’s energy sector is almost exclusively reliant on liquid fossil fuels for electricity generation, with only a small fraction of total energy supplied by hydroelectric dams.
Vahakn Kabakian, project manager for the Second National Communication to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told Executive that Lebanon will face serious consequences if the causes of climate change continue unchecked. By some estimates, Lebanon could see a 15 to 20 percent reduction in rainfall in certain areas by the year 2050, resulting in water shortages, shifting agricultural patterns and health impacts, he said.
The burning of fossil fuels by both the public and private sectors already takes a toll on public health due to urban air pollution. Air pollution raises the likelihood that urban dwellers develop chronic bronchitis and respiratory disorders, and can exacerbate the likelihood of lung cancer. The COED report estimates that the cost of air pollution in Lebanon is roughly $256 million annually.
Lebanon is party to the Kyoto protocol, and has therefore pledged to work toward the protocol’s targets of reducing emissions by 12 percent globally by 2010, and by 35 percent by 2030. Kabakian is currently working in partnership with the Ministry of Environment to establish a nationwide inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, by evaluating the intensity of emissions in each region of Lebanon.
“The first step is to assess Lebanon’s vulnerability,” he said. “Once you have the data you can run models to see what will likely happen in the future… When your predictions are established, then you can begin to discuss your mitigation options.”
Not in my backyard
While consumption of fossil fuels leads to air pollution and a rise in greenhouse gasses, consumption of material resources — whether in the form of ordinary household products or industrial solids — generates solid waste. Managed and treated correctly, solid waste is not a threat to the environment. However, leading environmental advocates say that just by the sheer quantity of Lebanon’s waste alone, it is evident that the country’s solid waste management programs have a long way to go in achieving ecological balance.
“Dumping solid waste is not the main problem,” said Ali Darwish, chairman of the non-governmental organization Greenline. “Problems arise in terms of what is being lost. Waste represents an enormous amount of primary material, material that could and should be recycled and reused.”
“When we make something only to dispose of it and bury it, we create a continuous demand on raw materials, which have to be extracted from the environment,” he added.
METAP estimates that each person in Lebanon generates roughly a kilogram of solid waste every day (the figure is slightly lower for those in rural areas and slightly higher in urban areas).
That means total solid waste generation for one year is some 1.4 million tons, growing at a yearly rate of about 6 percent. Of that waste, about 8 percent is composted and 8 percent recycled. Some 46 percent is landfilled and 38 percent is left in open dumps.
Lebanon has no national solid waste strategy. Management of waste is left up to the country’s municipal authorities, which sometimes contract private treatment facilities to dispose of the problem but often resort to open dumping, said Darwish.
Even in the Greater Beirut and Mount Lebanon areas, dumping and landfilling remain the primary final destinations for the majority of municipal waste.
Besides wasting valuable resources, open dumping can contaminate soil and groundwater reserves, leading to health problems in communities close to dumping sites.
According to a report released in 2007 by the MORES agency, under the Mediterranean Environmental Technical Assistance Program, the two most prominent sources of pollution to Lebanon’s groundwater are solid waste and waste water.
When waste is dumped in one place consistently, it forms a compact layer over time. Rain water filtering through this layer picks up toxic chemicals and heavy metals from waste that has not been correctly sorted or treated, continuing into the soil below, and draining into groundwater. The contaminated water may be used later in irrigation or consumption, posing serious health risks for consumers.
As the problem of solid waste shows, pollution rarely remains confined to a single sector. Just as the elements pass through different states, so too is contamination spread to all corners of the environment; hitching a ride on the natural cycle of life.
