Daily Star - A Year Of Inaction On The Environment

Year in Review

BEIRUT: Whereas some countries spent the last year preparing negotiating positions to take to Copenhagen, Lebanon left it late in 2009 to work out how to approach the climate change summit. The COP15 round of talks was billed by politicians and environmentalists alike as the last chance for the world to agree on a binding framework for curbing carbon emissions and limiting global temperature rises.
The lack of concrete legislation for CO2 cuts prompted many to label Copenhagen a failure. The Arab world – and Lebanon in particular – while producing a small percentage of global carbon emissions, is due to be one of the regions most affected by temperature and sea level rises.
Through political delay and disagreement on national environmental legislation, 2009 saw Lebanon weaken its already frail negotiating position it took to Copenhagen.
The year started with caretaker Prime Minister Fouad Siniora urging greater consideration of environmental issues in the national budget.
“We can no longer go on without resolving the deteriorating environmental problems,” he said. But negotiations on exactly how this was to be achieved stalled.
Lawmakers gathered in May to discuss ways of legislating against activities which damage the environment. Former Environment Minister Antoine Karam called for the establishment of “environmental police, courts, a prosecutor’s office … and trained environmental prosecutor.” As we approach 2010, these departments are conspicuous by their absence.
Lebanon is a country rich in beauty but poor in resources. Its majestic cedars, the pride of a nation and the envy of enemies throughout history, are as close as Lebanon comes to natural abundance.
Even these trees, referenced in the Bible, are now under threat from the devastating effects of climate change. Once heavily harvested for their sturdy, water-repelling qualities by Phoenician and Egyptian naval fleets, the cedars are now on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” as a “heavily threatened” species.
As dangerous as global warming is for Lebanon’s crowning flora, forests across the country continued to be ravaged by a more imminent threat: forest fires.
In a single July weekend, 305 forest fires were reported, necessitating 88 rescue operations. Starting fires is technically an imprisonable offence in Lebanon, but this apparently served as little deterrent for farmers and other individuals who start small blazes as ways of clearing waste.
Since 1965, Lebanon’s forest coverage has plummeted from 30 to 13 percent, mainly due to fires, according the Association for Forests, Development and Conservation (AFDC).
Lebanon purchased three Sikorski helicopters – at an estimated cost of $13.5 million – to help combat frequent blazes. However, the aircraft could not be immediately employed to tackle fires as Lebanese pilots lacked necessary specialized training to fly them.
As troubling as manmade disasters were for Lebanese land, its coastline continued to suffer in 2009 from human actions.
In September, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon announced that Israel would have to compensate Lebanon for the environmental damage wrought by its bombing of the Jiyyeh oil-powered power station in 2006.
The attack caused widespread damage along 150 kilometers of Lebanese shoreline as 15,000 tons of fuel oil poured into the eastern Mediterranean.
The order was welcomed by Lebanese environmentalists, who warned that marine species were still being killed by Jiyyeh’s legacy.
While imploring the international community to continue its assistance in cleanup operations, Ban pointedly remarked: “Lebanon currently lacks the infrastructure for the environmentally sound treatment of such waste.”
Late 2009 brought widespread flooding caused by heavy rain, prompting evacuations from damaged buildings, widespread power cuts and traffic jams along submerged highways. The same storms sunk two freight ships off the coast of Lebanon in December, the second carrying 83 people and nearly 30,000 cattle and sheep.
The paralysis which grips Lebanon whenever adverse conditions buffet its coast and mountains will be near the top of central government and municipality agendas in 2010.
Lebanon’s new national unity Cabinet ushered in the reign of Environment Minister Mohammad Rahhal, who wasted little time in announcing targets for renewable energy production, to be presented at Copenhagen.
Lebanon will get 12 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2012, the ministry has said. But even this apparently ambitious plan has proved controversial, given that Lebanon already generates up to eight percent of its electricity from hydroelectric power.
It is also unclear, judging by ministerial statistics, whether this 12 percent will take into account increased demand for electricity given that Lebanon still suffers from a supply shortage and roving power cuts, distaste of which led residents in the Akkar region to stage ongoing protests late in 2009.
Rahhal also re-launched a reforestation program last week, using aircraft to spread seeds across swaths of Lebanese countryside.
The year 2009 saw a number of colorful performances by Lebanese environment activists campaigning for action on climate change.
NGOs IndyACT and Greenpeace staged large scale protests in the run up to Copenhagen, including the former storming the stage at the Arab Forum for Environment and Development’s (AFED) conference in November, unveiling a banner which read: “Arabs are more than oil.”
The conference itself warned that Arab states needed to present a united front at Copenhagen to have any chance of influencing negotiations.
Such unity never materialized, according to members of the Lebanese delegation who made the trip to Denmark.
During an evaluative session post-Copenhagen, delegates lamented that Lebanon was squeezed out of talks as Arab countries pushed individual goals. “Arab countries are so divided and there is not one [single] position that could be taken. The Gulf countries had their own agenda and they pursued it,” said Nadim Farajalla, Associate Professor of Water Resources at American University Beirut. “Other countries could have done better had there been a common position.”
In spite of sporadic efforts to raise the profile of environment concerns, little concrete action or legislation was produced in 2009 to this end.
The need for environmental consideration in all aspects of governance is pressing, particularly in 2010’s post-Copenhagen landscape.
As Wael Hmaidan, climate change coordinator at IndyACT put it, “If we don’t work on climate change there is no need to work on anything else.”