Lebanon: an environmental disaster in the making

Watch out, eastern Mediterranean. Lebanon is sending this your way:

As inconceivable as it might seem, this is the view of the once pristine shore of Lebanon, just south of Beirut airport, where an entire city's raw sewage is allowed to enter the Mediterranean untreated. And, according to my friends, this is nothing compared to the situation in winter, when this sewage slick expands like something from an environmentalist's nightmare to encompass tens of kilometers of Lebanese coast.

Lebanon is a living example of an unregulated, laissez-faire, free market economy, à la Adam Smith. It's a place where, within very broad limits, one does exactly as one pleases, and the lines are only drawn when someone else squawks. If one wanted to look for the workings of the invisible hand, this is the place to carry out a search. I've been unable to spot it. If Lebanon is any indication, a completely unregulated economy is nothing but a fast trip down the road to perdition. And nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to the environment.

The beach

One thing I've come to understand in my time in Lebanon is that the lack of infrastructure is more than a personal inconvenience. It is that, of course. Endless power cuts, stuck elevators, spoiled food, dangerous water, corrosive air - all this makes life very, very complicated. Every day becomes an obstacle course to be navigated very carefully and at a tremendous cost in personal energy and efficiency.

But the consequences go much further. Lebanon - already a volatile mass of social and political contradictions - is also on the verge of polluting itself to death.

Living in Beirut it sometimes seems that every policy decision is calculated to exacerbate, rather than solve, whatever problem is at hand. And with it, to generate a host of follow-on effects, all of which are also guaranteed to be negative.

Take traffic, for example. Many cities have grappled in the last few decades with exploding traffic problems, killing smogs, and all the other effects of the internal combustion engine. 30 years ago Athens already had in place a strict system of control based on license plate numbers. During smog alerts, on alternate days, one was banned from bringing one's car into the city at all. The public transport system was rapidly improved, with new lines reaching out into the suburbs.

I use Athens as an example because it is in so many ways comparable to Beirut, geographically, socially and developmentally. Like Beirut, it has experienced rapid expansion. Like Beirut, it has limited water resources. The climate is very similar, as is the economic profile of its population. What's more: both countries share a propensity towards poor governance, corruption, favoritism, tax cheating and similar problems.

An example of what Lebanon has to deal with: in 2006 Israel
bombed large areas of Beirut's southern suburbs. The resulting
rubble was disposed of by creating a series of enourmous
mounds along the shore near the airport.

Yet Athens today, despite being in the midst of a deepening economic crisis, has quite successfully carried out a program of infrastructure improvements. The city works and seems pretty much like any other European or New Asian city. Granted, it has benefited from its integration into the European Union, especially as regards infrastructure improvements. And Beirut, a chronic war zone, has seen cyclical destruction of whatever infrastructure remained. Despite all that, the lack of vision is evident to the most casual observer. According not only to friends, but also to discussions with former government ministers, activists and prominent media personalities, there simply is no sustained effort to visualize what Lebanon is becoming, what the consequences will be, and what needs to be done to avert a looming disaster.

So, for example, what has Beirut done about its traffic problems? At first glance: nothing. Cars are literally everywhere. On the streets, on the sidewalks, choking up public spaces, parked 6 deep at corners and in pedestrian areas. In the streets, cars jockey endlessly for room to move while others block them to make drop offs or pickups because there is no more room to park. Ancient buses and broken-down mini-vans serve as the only public transport, invariably leaving clouds of acrid smoke in their wakes as they prevent everyone else from moving forward.

Worse, at some point someone decided to encourage motorcycles and scooters as an alternative to automobile transport, even going so far as to decree that motorcycles and scooters should have absolute right of way. This quite literally insane policy means that no one is safe from motorcycles anywhere in Beirut. They come from all directions, weave their way through traffic going the wrong way up one-way streets, fly down sidewalks, jump off curbs and push pedestrians off sidewalks.

The end result of all this is absolute chaos on the streets, on the sidewalks and basically anywhere reachable by car, motorcycle or scooter. Along with an ever-growing number of point sources of corrosive, dangerous pollution from badly maintained vehicles. All of which contributes to an already toxic cocktail that makes Beirut's air essentially unbreathable much of the time. A recent newspaper article pointed out that the air of Beirut is loaded with dangerous compounds and known carcinogens.

Electricity supply is another example. It has been decades since Lebanon had full-time power. Every corner of the country is plagued with continual power cuts. Some occur on a schedule of sorts, many others happen with no warning at all. The environmental and health consequences of this are enormous. In order to cope tens of thousands of private generators kick into action on balconies and in basements every time the power goes down. Since their maintenance generally goes no further than making sure these machines continue to operate, the contribution to the pollution load is enormous, especially in Beirut.

Another recent article discussed a little known problem: the illegal disposal of vast amounts of sewage directly into Lebanon's extensive and extraordinarily precious cave system. Developers building in the hills simply drill until they reach air, then pipe sewage directly down the hole, contaminating the underground water system and with it the caves through which it runs.

And while I'm talking about development I should point out that development in Lebanon is the perfect example of the unregulated free market at its worst. Illegal development abounds, unimpeded, although the line between legal and illegal seems quite fuzzy, to say the least. Development along the coast, particularly, has essentially overwhelmed the natural environment. At the same time, no effort is made to create a livable built environment at a human scale. 10 and 15 story apartment buildings by the thousands crowd the landscape, reaching up the hillsides in every direction with no usable road system, no lighting or sidewalks and no attempt to create functional neighborhoods.

Next on the list is the issue of potable water. Lebanon is essentially a country of mountains. As such, it has a relatively abundant supply of clean water, when compared to neighbors such as Syria, Israel, Egypt, or, for that matter, Greece. While in Athens one can drink water right out of the taps, in Lebanon there is no place where one can safely drink the tap water. In fact, many parts of the country have no public water supply at all. In other areas, like Beirut, chronic lack of maintenance results in tainted water contaminated with salt, volatile compounds and sewage. Once again, the consequences are enormous. Those who can afford it buy bottled water which comes from the very same sources that could be harnessed to supply a public system. Those who can't simply drink the water anyway, with the expected consequences, particularly for children and the elderly.

The lack of clean water has many follow-on consequences, as well. In food preparation, for example. Supposing you wash your lettuce and other vegetables at the tap, since washing them in bottled water is simply prohibitive. Essentially, you have compounded the problem by adding another vector of disease to the mix. I noticed very early after my arrival in Beirut that nearly everyone - despite their boasts of acquired immunity - gets food poisoning, and quite often. Frequently, this happens even at very good restaurants, who, between bad water and power cuts are simply unable to keep their raw materials safe and healthful.  Lebanon is in the process of creating an environment where it will become impossible to stay healthy.

I mentioned above the lack of urban planning. At home in Portland, I often bike or kayak in the evenings. Thanks to decades of careful planning these activities are simple to indulge in and always within reach. Granted, Portland is perhaps not a fair example. There are many places in the US that are actively hostile to these kinds of activities. Nevertheless, the need for urban planning and common spaces has taken hold all over the US and Europe in the last several decades, as well as in much of Asia.

In Beirut, with the exception of the 'Corniche', along the waterfront, jogging is simply out of the question. In most places, even walking is  difficult and occasionally dangerous. Biking is equally out of the question. Beirut is a city without parks, without walking and biking trails, without any observable, explicit, committment to human health and development. It's a city in which parenting must present extraordinary challenges, due to the lack of amenities specifically aimed at helping children grow and thrive.

In a way, this post has been as pessimistic as anything I've written. And that probably makes sense. The human costs of political and social upheaval are enormous. But the global costs of environmental degradation and destruction far outweigh them over time. Once the natural environment is contaminated and destroyed, social disagreements become almost petty by comparison.