By Najib Saab, Issue 11, March-April 1998

One of the special characteristics of the Third World, to which we belong, is that politics and macro-economic policies constitute the major portion of the daily public talk. Politics are an inherent part of the conversation of people at all levels, who would analyse problems and suggest ultimate solutions. Everyone is certain to have the best answer to any problem.

Heated economic and political discussions are heard in restaurants, television talk shows, taxis and streets. A participant in those polemics would talk as if he is an expert almost in all domains, from foreign policy to industry and commerce.

In contrast, conversations in the developed world revolve around weather, sports, art, love and nature. The reason why they are different lies in the fact that efficient and democratically elected institutions in the developed world are entrusted to study economic and development policies, and find proper solutions. As true representatives of the public, they take responsibility for policy making and implementation, while citizens perform productive work, achieve results and enjoy life.

It is the lack of similar specialised public institutions that induces the need among people of the Third World to be experts in politics and economics. This has also triggered different organisations or groupings to assume the roles of public institutions which are either inefficient or non-existent.

This phenomenon is now aggravating the environmental situation.

Environmental deterioration should have triggered the establishment of specialised agencies, entrusted to discuss issues in a serious manner, and implement solutions. Instead, specific environmental issues which are purely technical in nature have become the subject of public polemics among unspecialised individuals and groups. This has resulted in panic.

A few months ago, a futile debate broke out in Lebanon about options for solid waste management.

Incineration, landfills and composting were considered. The argument was carried out by groups of concerned people who had good intentions but lacked technical experience in the subject.

As a result, an exaggerated emergency situation was created. Traders turned environmental saviours grasped the opportunity to make big profits by providing emergency solutions. Emergency plans, after all, are costly. Who was responsible for giving opportunists the chance to market expensive remedies which proved to be no solution at all? Later, a pilot programme for waste separation at source was announced in the media. Containers were distributed at random in some streets. No public awareness campaign preceded, and no follow-up was planned. Flyers with ambiguous information and random sentences were distributed, which added to the chaos. The "sorting containers" carried stickers in English only, with dubious words that even specialists would find hard to understand: "organics", "recycle", "join the cycle". As if all the residents of the streets selected for the pilot project are recycling experts and as proficient in English as Cambridge graduates.

These containers, intended for sorting, were being filled with all sorts of waste every day. Nobody understood why they were there, or what they were supposed to put inside them.

Collection trucks, again with English banners, still pass every evening in a ceremonial procession to collect the "sorted" wastes. Is the intention to convince people that the project is a success? The contractor's claims that the project had been setback by the repeated theft of the bins were not accurate. I can give the contractor addresses of buildings where residents have hired workers to take the sorting bins away, after they became weary of the chaos, confusion and dirt they caused in the lobbies of their buildings.

Who pays for this poor planning and sloppy execution? And who will take responsibility for the effects on the public of the failed concept of waste separation.

Earlier, toxic waste, coastal areas and cement factories were all topics of superficial discussions.

When the issue of using asbestos pipes for the water network came up, environmental amateurs, professional syndicates and trade unions circulated contradictory statements, trying to solve problems through press conferences and fortune telling.

While public debate is essential to democracy, it cannot replace the role of specialised institutions.

Disengaging the decision-making process on serious environmental issues from superficial polemics is a prerequisite to finding viable solutions based on accurate data. This can only be achieved by establishing a national environmental research agency ­ an independent body entrusted with monitoring the environmental situation, and producing trustworthy reports in cooperation with universities and other research institutes.

This will ensure that decisions pertaining to the environment will no more be based on random assumptions, and the environment will cease to be a lottery ticket. Environmental management cannot be reduced to gambling with trial-and-error schemes, and conservation cannot be reduced to casual conversations.