Lebanon’s State of the Environment Report (SOER) is updated every 10 years to include a repository of environmental sector data, adopted legislation, and trends, developments and challenges within the sector. The topics covered by the report include environmental governance, solid waste management, water and wastewater, air pollution, climate change and energy, land cover and land use, haphazard urbanization, ecosystems and chemical management. The report also includes priority recommendations and economic analysis for each sector and scenarios for the future outlook. Ecocentra, in consortium with Sustainable Environmental Solutions (SES), were awarded the update of the SOER for 2020, which was published in 2021 under the title: Lebanon State of the Environment and Future Outlook: Turning the Crises into Opportunities.

Activities

In preparation for the assignment, several meetings were undertaken with MoE and the UNDP prior to commencement of any activities to align the strategy for the report and discuss challenges ahead considering the country was hit at the time with the financial crisis and mass protests. An inception report was prepared and submitted including the methodology and work plan. For the preparation of a data collection report, roundtable discussion workshops were organized over a two-day period to facilitate the data acquisition process engaging key national stakeholders for each topic. Data collection from stakeholders and other sources followed to identify obstacles and information gaps. The team of SOER experts was requested to update all the data available and to undertake an analysis of trends and changes and to provide an assessment of future outlook based on the current situation. This information was collated into a data analysis report. Finally, the SOER update was prepared and underwent various rounds of reviews and amendments by the various stakeholders including the client, MoE and funding agencies until a final version was developed. This version was then translated to Arabic and French and also underwent several rounds of review and quality control. Ecocentra’s experts and consultants lead the preparation of the chapters on Environmental Governance, Water Resources, Climate Change and Energy, Chemical Management and Future Outlook and contributed to the Air Quality chapter. In addition, the team’s economist contributed to several chapters on economic valuation of environmental costs and benefits.

Challenges

The financial crisis and the different prompt changes in the country at the time made it difficult to reasonably anticipate future outlook and further developments in Lebanon at all the sectors levels. In addition, the extensive review process by the different reviewers involving MoE, UNDP, UNICEF and the large number of experts rendered the finalization of each chapter and completing the report a lengthy, complex and challenging process. Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic coincided with the project obliging all the team members to meet virtually and prohibiting the recurrence of any face-to-face workshop with stakeholders.