sponsorship

• Education and Healthcare – STRATEGIZE

Despite its noted organizational flaws, a capacious healthcare system and a regionally admired tertiary education system have up to the 2020s been highlights of the public-private arrangement for provision of vital public goods in Lebanon. In both systems, health and education, many vulnerable private sector capacities have been depleted and public assets have faced threats of elimination during the economic and social crises of the past three years. These structural exhaustions have caused immense repercussions to society in the short term. In the long-term outlook, they could impede the social and economic development opportunities created by a thriving and balanced healthcare sector and formation of the country’s historically stable asset base, a skilled and motivated young population. Executive’s special report will seek to assess the damage to health and education after three years of closures of academic and healthcare institutions, exhaustion of human and technical resources, and drainage of skills and motivation. Our report will highlight opportunities that are born out of the demise of old systems and behaviors and examine the validity of new and current approaches.

• Renewable Energy and oil/gas – STRATEGIZE, ENABLE

At the beginning of 2023, access to energy remains both highly unequal and precarious. Affordable and clean energy are unmet needs for the sustenance of society and the functioning of the economy. For the energy question to be resolved – and cease being the bane of the republic after three decades of electricity sector inefficiency and piecemeal initiatives that were hampered by political interests and corruption – the triple energy challenges of the coming years have to be met. These challenges are the unabating urgency for developing the renewable energy production, the challenge of improving conventional production, transport, and distribution of electricity, and the challenge of building a hydro-carbon sector, avoiding further disruption to environment and climate. Executive’s report on the energy challenge, coming in follow-up to our November 2021 energy report, will focus on unbundling the barriers and report on ongoing and proposed answers to Lebanon’s triple energy challenge.

• Financial safety and social security – ENABLE, COMBAT, BUILD & REFORM

The role of finance and social recovery are entwined. Distrust of banks and high growth of the cash and informal economies cannot detract from the need to rebuild ways of nurturing legitimate wealth. This wealth is needed for the sustenance and continued productive living of those who earned it. It also is needed for the economy to grow, by channeling of savings as loans and investments into productive ventures under the oldest of rationales for the existence of financial markets. However, such channeling will not automatically be facilitated in the broken financial system of Lebanon where cash dealings have displaced bank transfers, and loan sharking has taken the lead over orderly credit. Our special report will analyze conventional and alternative investment flows, fair lending, and sustainable finance on the supply side, along with formal and informal demand in the enterprise and SME realms, household needs and borrowing abilities, and wealth strategies in the domestic real estate, hospitality and real economy sectors. The report will explore how linkages between financial safety and social security have been forming and how a more inclusive system of social security can be implemented in conjunction with the improvement of financial integrity.

• Environmental Justice and Environmental Entrepreneurship – STRATEGIZE, DEVELOP, COMBAT

The environment is as long-term a stressed asset as can be in a country with dense population and millennia of settlement history. At this point in time, however, the integrity of the environment is also a scarce asset that combines strong productive potential with importance for creation of new livelihoods in a country suffering immense economic distress. Our focus in the summer will be to assess the needs of environmental preservation and the societal benefits of sound environmental management, including economic, mental, and public health benefits. We will discuss the threats to environmental integrity that are correlated to weak or absent governmental oversight, corruption, and immediate concern for quick profits at the expense of long-term sustainability. On the side of economic opportunities, we will dedicate stories to sustainable entrepreneurship and startups in tourism, rural development, and green innovation.

• Corruption and Governance – COMBAT, BUILD & REFORM

In an ordered polity, corruption is a major problem whose control and incremental reduction can add percentage points to GDP performance. In a dysfunctional polity, corruption can be the facilitator of tyranny by individuals and cliques. A specific form of corrupt power grab – disguised all too often as the fight against the very evil of corruption – might be a stepping stone towards imposition of totalitarian “solutions” such as a fascist state or a 21st century surveillance state. Lebanon has throughout its history as a state sustained and survived varying degrees of corruption on the levels of individuals and on the levels of institutions –
in its historic crisis, however, this culture of impunity and corruption has become an existential threat to the lives of countless impoverished people. It also is a severe detriment to recovery and growth – which cannot be achieved without an active state – and restoration of trust between society and state. Fortified by our extensive experience in exposing trends of corruption and covering governance initiatives, our special report will analyze the impacts of corruption in the economic crisis years, the need for counter-measures and valid strategies.

We will investigate anti-corruption initiatives of the past three years and discuss the impact and validity of civil society and public and private sector initiatives, including corporate, institutional and gendered to strengthen governance and a culture of accountability.

• Economic Roadmap

Executive’s Economic Roadmap is orchestrated with the aim of providing Lebanon, and its nation builders, with a blueprint on which to birth a stronger and more prosperous economy. This year’s report, Economic Roadmap 6.0, will review the failures and achievements in the areas of social and public goods, namely poverty alleviation, employment creation, social safety nets, healthcare and education, sustenance of basic needs, and financial and economic inclusion. The annual Economic Roadmap also brings together the topics we have covered over the previous twelve months to align them with Executive’s five economic pillars. We also invite comment pieces from various experts and industry leaders from the fields of education, health, technology, among others. Last year’s Economic Roadmap 5.0 combined nearly 182 expert opinions who contributed, consulted, and allowed us to deliver over 360 policy priorities that can save Lebanon.