There is less water especially during the dry season

Lebanon faces a number of environmental threats, including air and water pollution, risks associated with climate change, and the impact of the 2006 war with Israel. IRIN takes a look at the top five.

The Mediterranean

Habitat destruction is putting Lebanon’s fishing industry, which according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) accounts for around 6,500 jobs, at risk of collapse if part of Lebanese waters are not designated protected zones in the near future, according to a new Greenpeace report A Network of Marine Reserves In The Coastal Waters of Lebanon.

Greenpeace says 18 designated marine nursery reserves should be created along the Lebanese coastline to replenish endangered fish populations which have been in decline for three decades.

With the prospect of offshore oil and gas exploration (approved by the Lebanese parliament in a new law), Greenpeace warns that “Lebanese coastal waters are also at high risk of accidental spills if exploitation of underwater marine petroleum oil reserves develops in Lebanon.”

Air Pollution

Scientists are warning that pollutants in Beirut’s air have reached concentration levels so high as to become toxic for human health.

Long-term exposure at levels of concentration exceeding 40 micrograms per square metre, according to World Health Organization (WHO) standards, may decrease lung function and increase the risk of respiratory symptoms in humans. According to WHO, levels should be below 20 micrograms per cubic metre to prevent ill health.

While the Mediterranean climate and stagnant air may “trap” toxic gases, the report suggests that 52 percent of the air pollution is from vehicles. Residents of Beirut on average own 2.6 cars.

Climate change

Climate-dependent sectors of the economy in Lebanon such as agriculture and tourism could be affected, according to the 2009 report Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions, by the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

With 60 percent of Lebanon’s economic activity taking place in a narrow coastal strip along the Mediterranean, it could be susceptible to flooding and erosion as sea levels are predicted to rise. Climate change could also close off previously viable economic activities such as the export of water intensive crops.

Water

Lebanon is the least water scarce country in the Middle East with an annual average rainfall exceeding 800 million cubic metres (mcm), which helps sustain more than 2,000 springs during the seven-month dry season.

However, due to water shortages especially during the dry season the average household in some areas receives under 50 litres per day, which WHO says is the minimum to ensure a healthy environment. It is particularly urban centres, say scientists, that will experience water shortages. Over 80 percent of Lebanon’s population lives in urban areas.

According to experts, the number of rainy days has fallen from 80-90 a year on average 20 years ago to 70. The intensity of the rainfall has correspondingly gone up, meaning less of it seeps into the soil, and more of it runs along the ground, causing soil erosion, landslides, flash floods and ultimately desertification.

Lebanon gets 35 percent of its water from snow. With a rise in temperatures snowfall will decrease and the snowline will rise, according to surveys at the Regional Water and Environment Centre of Saint-Joseph University in Beirut.

War

During the July War of 2006, the largest environmental catastrophe was the bombing of Jiyeh power station causing 15,000 tons of oil to seep into the ocean and affecting 150km of the Lebanese coastline as well as parts of Syria’s coast.

According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) 2007 Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment report, “the environmental legacy of conflict is broadly similar with environmental and health issues linked to toxic or hazardous ashes, oils, heavy metals, industrial chemicals, rubble, solid waste and sewage. These may pose health risks to clean-up workers, local communities and at several sites have the potential to leak into water supplies unless sites are thoroughly decontaminated and the pollution contained.”

IRIN

Mahmud Ahmadinejad the Iranian President is a chauvinist, a traditional ecologically ignorant chauvinist.  This post is not about traditional politics, and is not concerned with either the role of the Pasadran, the Iranian support for Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas or even whether Iran’s’ real ambitions are peaceful applications of nuclear technology or not. Each of the above is an important issue in its own right but a more fundamental belief that shapes the Iranian behavior can be traced to a vision that sees everything in the world through the narrow, vulgar and  reactionary Huntingtonian vision of the West vis a vis the rest. The rest in the Ahmadinejad vision is essentially Islam, just like Samuel Huntington predicted. The resulting conflict is not a Clash of Civilization as Huntington wants us to believe but in the words of Edward Said it is a Clash of Barbarians.

The stream of misinformed and at times utterly irresponsible statements by the Iranian president is unending. The whole world remembers his denials of the Holocaust, his claim that Iran is a state that is free of gay people, his assertion that Western decadence is best exemplified through Paul the Octopus and recently his mind numbing critique of the policies to reduce population growth on the ground that these policies are the product of a decadent anti Islamic Western mind set.

Iran has a population of 75 million inhabitants and its population policy is often used as an example of what government can accomplish once it puts its mind to it. The fertility rate in Iran has dropped substantially over the past 20 years as a result of family planning campaigns that have reduced family size substantially. The current fertility rate of 1.71 combined with a youthful population suggest that Iran s’ population should peak at about 90 million by 2050. Most economists and ecologists agree that Iran has benefited substantially from its ability to reduce its fertility rate, so why does Mr. Ahmadinejad seem to be focused on eliminating the conditions that brought about these gains?

President Ahmadinejad declared early this week a new program to encourage Iranians to have more children. The government program will reward every new born with a $950 bank deposit and an additional %95 every year until the new born is 18 years old. This level of incentives will be difficult to dismiss by the less fortunate in Iran but will most probably have disastrous effects if it succeeds.

Food is arguably the most important constraint on the level of welfare and nutritional intake of a population. Studies have shown that at least 205 of Iranians cannot purchase adequate amounts of food and around 50% suffer of nutritional deficiencies. Yet Mahmud Ahmadinejad decided that Iran could double its population to 150 million without appointing a commission or conducting a single study. Where is the food going to come from is a question that is not raised by the president and even more importantly if the food is available who is going to ensure accessibility.

Iran can use its oil revenue to subsidize various domestic programs but as the number of Iranians increases so does their consumption of energy which results in less and less net oil exports. Some economists project that Iran might not have any excess oil to export in 20-30 years even without a major demographic bulge.

Obviously food is not the only challenge from a growing population.  A healthy economic environment will have to create adequate good paying jobs in order to keep the well educated from migrating to other parts of the world. But the challenge is again not limited only to the well paying jobs but can often be seen not only in the double digit official unemployment numbers but also in the underemployment that is very widely spread.

Maybe the biggest long term challenge of the misguided population policy advocated by Mr. Ahmadinejad is to be expected in the ecological degradation that such a policy will cause. Added rates of fresh water withdrawal, deforestation, increased use of fossil fuels will result in more pollution and ecological degradation at every level. One study after another all over the world warn that the planet has already exceeded its carrying capacity but the Iranian president in his typical  nonchalant way dismisses all of these scientific studies as being a Western conspiracy aimed at containing Islam. Ecological scientific studies are conducted on the basis of universally accepted principles and to argue otherwise is senseless and absurd.  Truth is stranger than fiction; you cannot make these things up.

He told the participants , “Lebanon is beautiful, its is the most beautiful’. He called for preserving it and added: “”let us not ruin this country

Iffat Edriss Chatila of the Cedar Protection Group, organizer of Operation Big Blue, said in 2007 that the summer 2006 war with Israel had not only degraded the environment but also had eroded people’s attention to environmental issues.

“The war, the war, the war,” she said. “We try to forget about the war but it does not forget about us. People are desperate at the moment so they don’t care about the environment.”

Update: President Suleiman highlighted the importance of youth in Lebanon, New TV reported.

The country counts on the youth to defend Lebanon, the president said.

“We count on the youth to resist against Israel,” he added.

Suleiman said Lebanon’s youth should have the right to vote in elections. He was referring to the draft law to amend Article 21 of the constitution – which deals with the legal voting age. In February, parliament failed to pass a draft law to lower the voting age from 21 to 18.

The president also said the Lebanese and Palestinians should stand in unity to mark Friday’s 62nd anniversary of the Nakba, or “catastrophe” marking the 1948 creation of the state of Israel – when around 700, 000 Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes. He also called on the Palestinians to unite.

Beirut - Environment Minister Mohammed Rahhal said at a conference in Beirut that pollution and climate change cost Lebanon $ 565 million dollars a year.

“The state loses up to 565 million dollars to pollution annually, 100 million of which is due to climate change,” Rahhal said at a conference in Beirut. He added: “The tourism, health and agriculture sectors are most affected by the losses”

The government, which for the first time plans to start a fund for environmental issues, has concrete plans to fight climate change, he added. “We aim for 12 percent of Lebanon’s energy to be produced through alternative sources by the year 2012,” he said, adding Lebanon should capitalize on the wide availability of wind, water and sun.

A 2009 report by Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) has warned that global warming will have a severe impact on Arab states where water is already scarce.

It said sea level rise will mostly threaten Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Tunisia, affecting “one to three percent of land in these countries.”

Rahhal warned that temperatures in Lebanon were expected to rise two degrees on average in the next four decades, and five degrees by the turn of the century.

Rainfall is also expected to drop 50 percent by 2099 if measures to fight climate change are not put into effect, he added.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri is to head a Lebanese delegation to the global conference in Copenhagen on climate change . The conference hopes to cut a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrial countries to cut heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.