By Najib Saab, Issue 23, February 2000

The Ministry of Rural and Municipal affairs did well last month when it stopped an ill-conceived project sponsored by the World Bank, to assist the government in managing Lebanon's solid waste. By the time the project was halted, most of the $2 million budget had been spent, only to contribute to the national state of chaos and confusion over waste management.

The project was one of several others targeting the waste management sector, which were financed by international organizations during the last few years. Since there was no integrated waste management plan, the ones who really benefited from the loans and grants were contractors and middlemen, and no sustainable results were achieved. International sales representatives and their local friends continued to push for isolated projects on selective basis, ignoring the obvious prerequisite of a national waste management plan under which sectoral projects can be successfully implemented.

Management, nevertheless companies which hired them charged high figures for their services, multiplying their actual pay by many times. Some of those previously worked for other local programmes of international organizations, and part of their job was to select companies for the waste management project. They later re-appeared as employees of those very companies which they selected as consultants. This violates any code of practice governing the relation between the contractor and the consultant.

An Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report, prepared in the framework of the same waste management programme, to assess the environmental impact of a proposed landfill in southern Lebanon, warned of its bad effect on baboons. Although baboons have not been known in the natural history of Lebanon, it seems that the consultant forgot to erase them from a report apparently prepared for an African country and copied even without basic editing. This error did not even catch the attention of the project experts.

Along similar lines, the Judicial and Administrative Committee in parliament began last month a review of a draft environmental law. The chairman of the committee described the text as a "long lecture which will cause confusion and contradiction among ministries." The story behind this law is yet another example of the loss of money and time due to lack of coordination and a master plan. Work on the law began in 1994, and was funded by a United Nations project worth $650,000 for the Environment Ministry. The project also included re-organizing the ministry and training its employees. Dr. Hiyam Mallat, a law professor who teaches environmental law at Saint Joseph University, was assigned for the job. This entailed a thorough study of Lebanese law, pinpointing sections which needed to be modified, modernized and added, and those which existed but required appropriate mechanism for implementation.

In 1996, the proposed law was submitted to the cabinet, upon completion of Mallat's assignment and after a thorough revision by international legal experts provided by the United Nations Environment Programme. With the change of government in 1997, the Ministry of Environment ordered the draft law revised, and hired parties with no previous environmental law experience for the job. More curious still, Mallat was not even consulted when the draft law was revised, nor was he invited to attend any of the meetings. The newly-hired staff could have greatly benefited from his experience and work, for which he had already been paid from public funds. They at least could have discussed the matter with him to revise the articles which they did not accept or thought needed modification or re-writing.

All this was not done. And the result, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, is the draft which the chairman Parliament's Judicial and Administrative Committee had described as a long, confused and contradictory speech. It appears that his description is correct, because environment laws usually set clear guidelines for the implementation of an environment policy and leave the details for subsequent legislation.

Repetitions of projects also seem to be the norm. A current World Bank sponsored programme on Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) at the Ministry of Environment, resembles initiatives in the same domain which were supposedly completed years ago. The programmme also includes training of employees, establishing EIA manual and developing a law governing implementation and specifying parameters for the levels of environmental reports required by different types of projects and activities. Those terms of reference sound like a repetition of another programme which was executed between 1994 and 1996 at the same ministry. It was found out that an EIA manual which was >completed in 1996 through a joint UNDP-UNEP project, was repeated in 1997 under the European Union's SIU programme which was assisting the Ministry, and was then repeated for the third time in 1998 through a project funded by the World Bank. In both cases, the cost was many times higher than the cost of the original manual, upon which the re-writing was based, as those familiar with the case admit. And here it comes again as part of a new programme for the year 2000. Once again, those who executed the original programme were not consulted or asked about their experience, or questioned on perceived deficiencies and shortcomings of their work.

It seems that looking into avoiding repetition, insuring sustainability and curbing squandering do not serve the crowd of international sales representatives and their local cronies, who are being provided with cloned jobs at astronomical pay. It's like a closed door session to exchange projects, jobs and benefits.

"Companies" of middle-men, who only owned a collection of curricular vitaes, were created and flourished. They succeeded in making deals worth millions of dollars, despite the fact that many cannot produce any officially registered full-time employee, and cannot produce any record of similar projects which they executed successfully in the past.

One flagrant example of the sterility and hopelessness of certain internationally-financed projects is that rush at the end of each fiscal year to execute any jobs and invite people to meetings, workshops and conferences from Tunisia to China via Italy. They often beg us to send any representatives, only to prove that a meeting took place "with representatives from 20 countries", produce "achievements" reports, and send the bill to the donors. For if they don't spend their entire allocated budget, the amount will be deducted the following year. Such meetings often end with no follow-up and no tangible results.

Loans and grants, however, don't come free. In many cases, they burden the country with obligations which are passed down from one generation to another. Some employees of donor organizations market development loans in a style similar to that of stock market traders. In fact, some international jobs depend on the income from service charges levied on loans. Those charges, which are supposed to cover cost of supervision and administrative fees, are collected as of the day a loan is signed, even if the project is shelved or delayed.

For developing countries to benefit from international loans and grants, they have first to improve their own capabilities to develop a master plan identifying their national priorities, negotiate for the best conditions, and create efficient project implementation and supervision mechanism. There must also be some way to differentiate between grants and loans which truly benefit the country, and those which end up on the trade market to satisfy the needs of international sales representatives and their local associates.

It isn't wise for developing countries to continue with this chaotic search for international loans and grants, in the absence of a master plan and supervision mechanism. All this would do is accumulate debts and put more restraints on future generations. Donors, whether they are organizations or governments, are not charities. They have their agendas, and developing countries have to set their own agendas also, to benefit from the matching interests. Loans and grants to help developing countries advance and get out of the vicious circle of poverty. They can only achieve this end when they are used as productive investment for a better quality of life which would benefit all the people.