By Najib Saab, Issue 18, May- June 1999

Introducing ministries of environment and public environmental bodies have for long been the goal of environmentalists in the Arab countries. We have always followed their activities with enthusiasm in every Arab country. However, the presence of such environmental institutions will remain useless unless they have power, authority and political clout. Some Arab ministries of environment have actually turned into ornaments, incapable of implementing any significant programme.

In general, ministries of environment in the third world, and Arab countries in particular, lack political influence, as if they were second-class ministries or consolation prizes given to political and social minorities that are denied "first class" portfolios.

The marginal role bestowed on ministries of environment in Arab countries is matched with an active role in most developed countries, where top politicians seek the ministry of environment as prestigious appointment. A case in point is Klaus Töpfer, the former minister of environment in Germany and the current executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), who was considered a senior minister with high profile, and his name circulated as his party's candidate for chancellor. The minister of environment in the Netherlands Jan Pronk asked for the environment portfolio in the recent coalition government, after serving for a decade as the powerful minister of foreign development cooperation responsible for an annual budget of four billion dollars.

Some Arab environment ministers tried to break the marginalization by launching public relations campaigns in mass media. However, media promotion bears the seeds of its failure in the absence of long term strategy and actual programmes. The sight of a minister of environment raiding an illegal quarry or a polluting factory, or chasing a car with poisonous emissions, will remain ineffective promotional stunts, unless augmented by environmental laws and regulations enforced on all quarries, factories and cars. However, most environment ministers in Arab countries are incapable of enacting or enforcing environmental legislation, since their role in the government is marginal and the actual power remains in the hands of "first class" ministers who assume development, services and security portfolios. This lack of political clout is reflected in the ever shrinking environmental budgets. While the trend is to spend more on environmental care and sustainable development, in recognition of the magnitude of environmental problems, the budgets of ministries of environment in Arab countries are ever dwindling. In Lebanon, for example, the budget of the ministry of environment, originally meager, was recently cut by half - to a mere $1.5 million. In comparison, the budget allocated to the ministry of environment in the Netherlands, another small country three times the size of Lebanon, is $500 million, which is a small proportion of the total allocations for environment-related projects executed by other Dutch ministries. Failure to recognize the ministry of environment as a planning and coordination centre, results in denying it the minimum funding required to perform its job.

Deficit in the budgets of Arab environment ministries is manifested in the absence of national environmental policies and programmes, which are usually substituted by occasional programmes with random international and bilateral funding, implemented selectively according to priorities of the donor organizations and countries. Ministries of environment, lacking money and experience, are usually incapable even of managing and coordinating such programmes. In most cases, junior employees reporting to donors run these substitute programmes, and "political contractors" implant members of their clans in beneficial posts, giving no consideration to skill or efficiency. As a result, these programmes become resource-wasting pits and political power centres that constitute a burden to the institutional work of ministries rather than helping them build management capability.

Due to the lack of money, experience and power, ministries of environment become submissive tools in the hands of contractors, middlemen and emergency plan entrepreneurs. In Lebanon, failure of the ministry of environment to develop a serious waste management strategy has allowed contractors to benefit from emergency plans that increased costs by hundreds of millions of dollars while remaining first-aid procedures. Impotence of Arab environmental authorities is not only seen at the national level, but also has regional ramifications. In the eighties, I was among the consultants who were commissioned to prepare for the establishment of the Council of Arab Ministers Responsible for Environment (CAMRE), in the framework of the League of Arab States. My belief, then, was that the Council, established in 1987, would be an active framework to develop Arab environmental cooperation, determine the main environmental problems and design priority action plans for the Arab region. Following the Rio summit in 1992, the Council adopted an important document defining the principles of Arab action for sustainable development. This document could have served as a constitution for Arab work in environmental conservation. It contained the following programmes: combating desertification and increasing green areas, controlling industrial pollution, environmental education and information, marine environment, developing water resources, institutional regulations for environmental management, environmental information networking, biodiversity, and protecting cultural sites against pollution. The Council decided that top priority should be given to combating desertification, industrial pollution and disseminating environmental education and information.

However, CAMRE's work did not go beyond the stage of a declaration of intent, as it remained short of funding and political resolve. UNEP was supposed to provide half the funding in the first phase, while member states provide the rest and later undertake the entire funding. In practice, however, the Council failed to secure any sustainable Arab funds, and its fixed budget was limited to the few thousand dollars still provided by UNEP, barely sufficient for expenses of the secretariat and some studies. The Council has even been unable to raise $500 annually from each member state to finance its $5000 environment award.

It is worth to note that the European Union allocates billions of dollars annually for joint environmental projects in Europe, along side the $20 million which the European Environment Protection Agency spends annually on coordinating environmental activities within the Europe.

Despite this huge discrepancy, the European ministers of environment travel on scheduled flights to attend regional meetings, and commute from hotels to conference halls by bus or bicycle, accompanied by a team of environmental experts, while many Arab ministers travel on private planes and commute in luxury car convoys, and refrain from paying the $5000 meager annual contribution to the environment fund of their secretariat.

It is unacceptable that an environment ministry or council become a silent witness, and the situation will not change unless the ministry of environment takes its position as a principal and influential ministry, not a second choice for those denied a "first class" ministry. CAMRE's role must be activated and it should be allocated an annual budget no less than $20 million to perform an effective regional coordination work.

The talk about eliminating the Ministry of Environment in Lebanon coincided with the general lax attitude over the environment in the region. This, however, came in stark contrast with the policy statement of the Lebanese government which promised to "develop a national environmental policy, address environmental priorities in the framework of defined strategy and establish an institutional coordination system among different government departments to assess the environmental impact of projects."

The formation of the Higher Environment Council recommended by the committee headed by minister Michel Murr does not sanction the slashing of the ministry of environment. This Ministry is needed to exercise jurisdiction over major environmental issues with global character, and coordinate specific environmental policies and activities of other government institutions. Various sectors are associated with environmental protection, including: industry, agriculture, transport, communications, power generation, water networks, pumping, building construction, road networks, land-use, refineries, sewage treatment, research institutions and universities, non-governmental organizations and consumers at large.

Some governments have attempted to achieve environmental coordination among various ministries by setting a central higher environment council headed by the prime minister. Thus environmental measures affecting more ministries can be issued at the level of the prime minister not the ministry of environment, avoiding friction between government bodies. With the prime minister on top, the higher environmental council could endorse measures that carry political weight, which is essential for the successful implementation of environmental policies. The coordination character of this council does not, in any way, replace the mandate ministry of environment. Thus, we should welcome the formation of a Higher Environment Council in Lebanon as a powerful coordination body, introduce National Environment Agency responsible for scientific research, and upgrade the Ministry of Environment to from second class to first class. The option of creating a ministry of planning and environment should also be explored. The way we deal with environmental policies, management and institutions will determine the quality of our development strategies for the 21st century.