Lebanon Needs A Breath Of Fresh Air

This editorial was published in The Daily Star on 10/12/2010

The university sector and the business community have joined forces to act on the question of air pollution in Lebanon. They are launching a study that will be conducted by van in Greater Beirut, to monitor vehicle emissions and the wider issue of air quality.

A day earlier, the American University of Beirut, which is involved in the van study, warned that air pollution is unsafe in the capital, as the AUB team behind the effort focused on the danger posed by carbon emissions, related to having too many cars on the roads.

Meanwhile, government officials from around the world are gathering in Cancun, to grapple with pressing environmental issues, such as climate change and the worrying role of carbon emissions in this phenomenon.

One might think that with all the environment-related problems of late, whether in Lebanon or the region, politicians might have sat up and taken notice. It’s a daunting challenge to face, but there are several areas of concern in Lebanon: water quality, susceptibility to fires and the loss of green spaces, the air people breathe, and the country’s dumps, landfills and quarrying.

Amid all of these alarm bells, politicians are often occupied elsewhere. There has been a pledge to improve the ratios of the energy sector, to reduce the percentage of polluting energy in the mix. However, the latest signals from AUB indicate that the problem doesn’t seem to be near a solution, but might be getting worse.

The new study will focus on roads and highways, one of the obvious culprits. Is it too much to expect politicians to focus on this vital yet needlessly chaotic sector? Instead of fighting over civil service posts, and which sect gets to fill them, and whose prerogatives will be bolstered in a petty turf war, can politicians get serious about a policy item such as ensuring the country doesn’t have too many cars on its roads?

Anyone who drives from the mountains around Beirut into the capital takes a dip into an ugly layer of brown smog – the evidence is already there, even before AUB completes its latest study.

In other countries, taking steps to reduce air pollution levels is something that is actually debated, seriously, and then implemented, and finally followed-up. In Lebanon, there are hardly any serious plans for how to deal with next month, or worse, trivial personal interests block any process of improving governance.

Ruin the country’s landscape by giving out licenses to parties that harm the environment? No problem. Mismanage water resources? Fine. Allow fires to ravage vitally-important green spaces? Why not?

Instead of talking so much about the dangers posed by Israel and Iran, politicians should remember the environmental degradation that has afflicted these two states, which are even more capable of fending off disaster than the dysfunctional system in Lebanon.