A session entitled “Environmental governance in Lebanon: challenges and opportunities” was organized by 100% Liban, the Public Service Observatory (OFP) at Saint-Joseph University in Beirut, the Ministry of the Environment and moderated by Pr. Charbel Afif.
It took place at 100% Liban in the presence of the Minister of the Environment Dr. Nasser Yassin, the Director of the OFP Professor Pascal Monin, the Project Manager at UNDP Dr. Manal Moussallem, from the Faculty of Science Dr. Charbel Maroun, the President of the Parliamentary Committee for the “Environment” Ghayath Yazbeck, MPs Ragy El Saad and Jihad Pakradouni, Ambassador Jean Makaron , Secretary General of Catholic Schools Father Youssef Nasr, start-ups, NGOs and members of the organization.
In response to a series of discussions on this topic held by the OFP and the UNDP from February to April 2022, Dr. Charbel Maroun, Observatory of Public Service and Good Governance from Saint Joseph University, presented a policy paper that resulted from an assessment of the proposals to develop “Environmental Governance” from the adoption of decentralization in the solutions.
The session tackled the following topics:
• Challenges facing the environment sector in Lebanon
• Importance of the governance in the environment sector in enhancing the citizen’s health and the national economy
• Role of the public and private sectors in achieving the governance
• Different steps to achieve the governance in the different axes: air, water, land use, soil, etc.
• Recommendations of the policy paper on Environmental Governance in Lebanon prepared by Saint Joseph University, the United Nations Development Program, and the Ministry of Environment.
• Roadmap for the adoption of the policy paper
The action plan for the adoption of the policy paper includes three essential topics:
– An inventory.
– Recommendations for developing the policy paper.
– Suggestions for an economic recovery plan for global environmental governance.
For her part, Dr. Manal Moussallem, project manager at UNDP talked about the most important recommendations.
The decentralization is logical, as is managing the forest, gathering and sorting debris, and processing it locally, according to Dr. Nasser Yassin, who noted that “the judicial system is not operating well, and we need a functioning court system and a full-time environmental prosecutor.”
This session is just one of many that 100% Liban has planned to promote dialogue across a range of subjects and among the many sections of the private sector.