Decentralization and Municipalities: Bridging the Gap between Rhetoric and Action
Decentralization and Municipalities: bridging the Gap between Rhetoric and Action
The term “decentralization” pervades Lebanese politics, echoing through speeches, slogans, and the work programs of various parties. Despite its omnipresence, its true and immediate significance, particularly in the context of municipal work, is often overlooked.
The past decade has ushered in tumultuous times for Lebanon, thrusting municipalities into the forefront with a weighty burden. Unfortunately, these bodies find themselves ill-equipped and unprepared to navigate the complexities of the myriad challenges that have unfolded. These challenges include the enduring Syrian displacement since 2011, the exacerbation of the solid waste crisis in 2015, the onset of the financial and economic crisis in 2019, the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and the natural disasters and earthquakes that have shaken the region in 2023. Moreover, municipal budgets have suffered a sharp decline due to the collapse of the local currency.
In light of this reality, and as part of an exhaustive study, “Nahnoo” Association undertook a comprehensive tour of municipalities, mayors, and municipal unions. During this initiative, interviews were conducted, focusing on topics related to their operational aspects, with a particular emphasis on administrative decentralization. It is noteworthy that the municipality stands as the smallest administrative unit in Lebanon and serves as the primary manifestation of administrative decentralization within the country. Our examination extended to the Independent Municipal Fund, spanning the period between 1993 and 2020. This involved a meticulous analysis of the mechanisms and criteria governing the distribution of funds to municipalities and regions.
The challenges facing municipal work are numerous. Frequently, attempts at modernization inadvertently weaken the system, primarily due to the absence of long-term planning and reliance on improvised methods in the formation of municipalities and their federations. Bureaucratic hurdles further hamper the financial capacities of municipalities, hindering the timely and accurate receipt of funds from the Independent Municipal Fund. Transparency issues persist, with municipalities often reflecting a lack of openness, auditing, monitoring, and accountability—mirroring challenges seen in other state institutions. Representation and participation validity also pose significant concerns at the municipal level.
In light of our extensive preparation, involving the creation of maps, graphs, data analysis, and gap identification, we have formulated a set of recommendations. These recommendations have been transformed into a legislative proposal, undergoing multiple rounds of discussions and observations. Subsequent amendments will be made to refine the proposal before presenting it to representatives with the aim of transforming it into law.
As an illustrative example, this proposed law aims to liberate the Independent Municipal Fund from the control of the central authority. In exchange, it advocates subjecting municipal operations to scrutiny by the Audit Bureau, the Civil Service Board, and the Central Inspection. Additionally, the proposal calls for the mandatory nature of municipal unions following a restructured framework that enhances their organizational structures. Addressing electoral processes, our proposal suggests the direct election of mayors and deputy mayors, with resident involvement in the nomination and election processes based on place of residence rather than mere registration. Further, we recommend the modernization of the Ministry of Local Administrations, with the attachment of the General Directorate of Local Administrations and Councils to it. A pivotal aspect of our proposal involves the adoption of a centralized electronic platform for the publication of crucial information related to local administrations. Notably, our proposal emphasizes the establishment of participatory democracy. This entails engaging residents in decision-making processes, allowing them to voice their opinions and aspirations. It advocates for the implementation of referendums and public sessions.
At present, we are actively conducting a series of meetings across diverse Lebanese regions to introduce and deliberate on the proposed law. The objective is to finalize its version, harboring the optimistic expectation that it will garner support among the nation’s representatives and eventually transition into implementation through the advocacy campaign recently initiated by “Nahnoo”.
This presents a unique opportunity for those enthusiastic about decentralization to transcend mere rhetoric and political debates, steering it towards tangible action that directly benefits citizens. Municipalities, as the most proximate administrative units, serve as a vital link between citizens and higher governing bodies—they essentially embody the state in the immediate vicinity of the people.
NAHNOO primée par la Fondation Ghazal et la Fondation de France
Nahnoo primée par la Fondation Ghazal et la Fondation de France
L’ONG Nahnoo, qui milite depuis 2009 pour la préservation des espaces publics et culturels au Liban, vient de remporter le prix annuel de la Fondation Ghazal pour l’éducation, la recherche et la paix au Liban. Nahnoo a été récompensée pour son travail en faveur de la prévention des conflits et la promotion de la paix dans le pays. La Fondation de France, qui a été créée en 1969 à l’initiative de l’écrivain français André Malraux et du général Charles de Gaulle, prend exceptionnellement part cette année à l’événement, dans le cadre de son programme de soutien au Liban, notamment après les explosions au port de Beyrouth. La remise du prix aura lieu aujourd’hui à 11h, au cours d’une cérémonie qui sera retransmise en ligne sur l’application Zoom (https://zoom.us/j/98974890143 ? pwd=c2hnMlVva0VzS0pyaHFoOVNiS1BLdz09).
Chaque année, la Fondation Ghazal récompense une ONG libanaise dont les activités contribuent au renforcement de la paix et du vivre-ensemble. Elle offre également des bourses pour les étudiants en difficulté financière. La Fondation Ghazal a choisi de récompenser Nahnoo cette année en signe de reconnaissance pour ses efforts dans la préservation et le développement des espaces publics et culturels du pays.
https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1285130/nahnoo-primee-par-la-fondation-ghazal-et-la-fondation-de-france.html
Endangered nature reserves, pollution and private violations: Lebanon’s highly neglected seaside
Endangered nature reserves, pollution and private violations: Lebanon’s highly neglected seaside
Amira Rajab
https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1284195/endangered-nature-reserves-pollution-and-private-violations-lebanons-highly-neglected-seaside.html
AMCHIT, Lebanon — The coast of Amchit is rocky and steep, punctuated by gorges through which water flows into natural caves. The waves are strong here in winter, pushing the water loudly into the hollow spaces between the rocks.
Only a few fishermen cast their lines into the sea. It is a tranquil picture: The sea in front of them, the rods in their hands, the sun on their faces. Though not apparent at first glance, the anglers are standing above caves that are home to the endangered Mediterranean monk seal, one of the rarest species of marine mammal in the world, with fewer than 700 individuals remaining. From 2003-2020, only 47 were spotted in Lebanese waters.
“The caves are not only of big importance to the environment, but also carry a lot of history and heritage,” said Farid Abi Younes, an architect from the area. “Those monk seals especially come to Amchit because of the clear water.”
However, neither the fact that the area is one of the few public spaces remaining on Lebanon’s coast nor the vulnerability of the natural environment has prevented private investors from encroaching on the area.
In between two of the seal caves, a private construction site is now blocking the view of the sea. Aluminum walls cover parts of the site, and an excavator has already dug into the ground and piled a mountain of rocks next to it. The ground here was broken to build a villa — for private use only.
“We have 220 kilometers in the coast and 80 percent is violated by private resorts,” said Mohammd Ayoub, the director of Nahnoo, an NGO which runs campaigns that promote cultural heritage and the preservation of public spaces. “These should be public spaces. A country that has no public spaces is lacking a soul.”
Law 144/S of 1925 dates back to the French mandate, but remains a very important one. It defines maritime public domain as “the seashore extending to the farthest point that waves reach during winter, as well as sand and gravel beaches,” and thus designates the Lebanese coastline as public property. It was followed by a decree (4810) introduced in 1966 that adopted a more economical approach, making constructions on the beach — for example in areas that are classified as touristic or industrial, and only in places that have a public character and economic justification —permissible. Stil, the decree also states that the beach must remain accessible to the public, and construction should not obstruct the shore’s continuity. Private establishments oftentimes choose to ignore these requirements.
In October 2017, the Lebanese Parliament passed Law 64/2017, “Settlement of Infringements on Maritime Public Property.” It imposes only low fines on violators without addressing the main issue of removing the encroachments and restoring the right to the beach as a public property. It does not explicitly put an end to the exceptional decree and thus still allows legal infringements on the beach.
According to environmental engineer Diana El Halwani, encroachments on and violations of maritime public properties have affected more than 5 million square meters of the Lebanese coast.
Nahnoo is part of The Coast for All, a coalition which launched a campaign last month aiming to preserve and restore the public coast of Lebanon. The campaign has launched a petition to request an amendment to Law 64/2017 to “restrict the right to occupy marine public property to the Lebanese state only,” and to limit encroachments on public properties.
“We are trying to save what is left because this is our right,” Ayoub told L’Orient Today. “Big parts of the coast are inaccessible today and we are losing an important resource from all perspectives: economic, environmental, social and cultural.”
According to data collected by the campaign, around 1,685 species of marine animals in the sea surrounding Lebanon are threatened today, and construction is only part of the issue. Marine life is also threatened by pollution coming from wastewater discharges and contamination by microplastic particles and seaside garbage dumpsters.
Requests for statements from the Environment Ministry on how to solve that issue have not been answered.
The arguments for preserving the coast are economic as well as environmental.
“Studies have shown when opening the coast to the public there are a lot of economic benefits,” Ayoub said. Under the current conditions, in which large parts of the coast are monopolized by private beach clubs, he said, “One individual is taking all the money while the city stays hungry. However, it could be the case that the city is wealthy just because of a public beach.”
He cited the example of Sour, where the public beach provides employment to more than 600 people. During the summer of 2021, the municipality of Sour collected more than LL4 billion from beach services, and the average revenues of local businesses increased by up to 70 percent. This could increase if more public spaces are created and preserved, Ayoub believes.
In Amchit, Abi Younes also cited tourism as another reason to protect the coast from development.
“We have to preserve our grottos and our coast. But we should also push to put Amchit and also the rest of Lebanon on the map of international tourism, to make it a popular destination for tourists from around the world,” he said.
Abi Younes has been raising the alarm to both the public and the concerned government authorities about the threat to Amchit’s coast.
“My demand is to protect those caves and also the public beach,” Abi Younes told L’Orient Today.
After he publicly pushed for an immediate end to the construction and gathered people from Amchit and elsewhere in Lebanon to his cause, “the responses were positive,” he said.
“The minister of tourism took the decision to pause the work on the construction site, so for now it is on hold,” he said.
Representatives of the Ministry of Tourism and the municipality of Amchit did not respond to requests for comment.
Today, the construction site is abandoned. The excavator, however, is still there, as if awaiting its moment to start work again.
Ayoub hopes that by rallying the public, the site and others like it can be preserved for good.
“Awareness will change everything,” he said. “Of course we will not see a change by tomorrow, but once the people are fully aware of what is happening and are aware of all the violations, they will be the ones who will push for a change. For me it is very clear, we have a very important resource: the coast. Why are we not treating it like that?”
Sea rights at naught
Sea rights at naught
Sally Abou AlJoud https://nowlebanon.com/sea-rights-at-naught/
When Fifi Kallab, an environmental science professor, returned to Lebanon in 1980, six Mediterranean monk seals thrived in Amchit’s waters. In 1982, two of them were hunted down.
Being one of the world’s most at-risk marine mammals, with fewer than 700 left worldwide, the species is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Threatened Species and is rendered “extinct” in Lebanon’s waters. Their habitat degradation is a primary factor driving the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus)’s population decline.
Less than five seals remain in Lebanon’s sea, said Jina Talj, founder and director of Diaries of the Ocean, a women-led non-profit organization focused on raising awareness about marine life and mobilizing marine conservation actions.
“Two of these seals forage and rest in one of the two caves in Amchit,” added Talj. Should the caves be destroyed, the seals would also die, she said.
But at the beginning of November, heavy construction equipment started drilling into the town’s rocky outcrop atop two littoral caves, threatening the natural habitat of the world’s rarest seal. The town’s residents believe the development project is set to build yet another private villa adjacent to Amchit’s notable seaside boulevard, but nothing has been confirmed. They also say they don’t yet know who is behind the project.
Amchit’s residents called for a spontaneous demonstration on November 14 to protest the new development project, which they claim is illegal.
Lebanon’s shoreline has been teeming with thorny public property violations and exploitation as private, well-connected investors habitually skirt regulations and encroach upon the country’s public beaches and coastal strands discounting the adverse environmental, social and economic impacts.
A group of organizations, experts and activists established the “Coast for All” campaign to preserve the scant remaining maritime public land and call for the amendment of budget law 2017/64 aiming to limit public property occupancy rights to the state only and block private developers and individuals from investing on the seashore.
Less than five seals remaining
The monk seals have low annual reproductive rates and poor early survival rates, which makes it an arduous task to help this marine animal reproduce and proliferate.
Countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea, namely Greece and Turkey, have galvanized conservation activists and scientists to protect the monk seal and enlarge its population. But Lebanon hasn’t done much at the state level to protect the endangered species.
“The monk seal is what we call a keystone species; it is not replaceable by another species that can take its place or its niche in the food chain,” Talj explained.
She said there need to be more conservation efforts by the government, local organizations, and citizens, to provide sanctuary to the remaining seals and allow them to reproduce and proliferate. “The conservation starts with protecting their habitat.”
The authority is the investor
Rising construction on the sea abounds with detrimental consequences.
Any construction project close to the waters cannot be connected to the wastewater treatment network, and, instead, violators have to construct a separate wastewater treatment plant which entails deeper digging and further prompts the caves’ collapse, explained Kallab.
“Where there are executives giving out permits to their connections, the seafront is destroyed; where there are no executives, the seafront is all right and you can see the water,” Kallab asserted.
Founder of sister organizations Byblos Ecologia and Green Square, Kallab is devising several free educational projects in Amchit to spread ocean literacy and teach children and adults fishing skills.
Kallab and her team are also looking at involving maritime stakeholders in conservation and ecological tourist activities, including monk seal cave tours.
“All of these projects cannot happen if the cave is destroyed,” Kallab said. “[Violators] have wiped out everything, can they just leave our sea alone for us to enjoy?”
“In any country in the world, beaches remain public because they are considered a national resource and thus they are usually open and accessible, not obscured,” said Mohammad Ayoub, the executive director of NAHNOO, a civil society group focused on public space, cultural heritage and good governance.
The judiciary is assigned by the authority and legislates for their own gain, so it would be unavailing to report to it, Ayoub said. He added these law infringements are not practiced only by those in parliament or the government, but that they extend to security and army officials.
“How are we going to stop [them] when the authority is the investor himself?”
A study conducted by NAHNOO examining the footprint public beaches leave on the national economy compared to private resorts reported that visitors to free and open beaches in two locations, the southern city of Tyre and Kfarabida (in the vicinity of Batroun, North Lebanon), generate more profit for the city than visitors to private resorts, as the latter can pick up their needs and wants at the resort.
“When a public beach is turned into a private resort, any profit generated will return only to the resort owner, the rest of the city doesn’t benefit,” Ayoub said.
In a country staggering from one crisis to another, namely historic economic and financial crises, which annihilated the middle class and battered the poor, beach resorts are reserved for the most affluent.
Cultural heritage and collective memory
Ayoub added that private seafront projects quash a city’s traditions and culture.
The historic district of Saida’s “Bahr El Eid”, which translates to “The Holiday Sea,” a holiday makeshift amusement park once stretched to the city’s sandy beaches and is now molded into the city’s collective memory.
Another example is “Orba’at Ayoub”, or “Job’s Wednesday”, a Beiruti tradition that honored prophet Ayoub on the last Wednesday of April at Ramlet El Baida, the last public sandy beach in the bustling capital. But a high-rise five-star hotel, Lancaster Eden Bay, was banked right on the shore, stripping the land from beachgoers and blocking the sea view.
Newroz, the arrival of spring and the new year observance by Lebanon’s Kurds is another waterside folklore from the past which is no longer celebrated the same way.
“Where are all of these celebrations today?” Ayoub asked rhetorically. “They’re all gone.”
The maritime public property borders are enshrined in a law issued in 1925, which defines maritime public domain within the legal article no.144/S and states, “it is the seashore extending to the outermost point that waves reach during winter, as well as sand and gravel beaches.”
Article 1 of the law states that maritime public domain can neither be sold nor acquired over time. The 1925 law only permits occupancy on the shoreline; putting the public land in use and generating profit.
However, there’s a difference between occupancy and investment; occupancy is limited to a temporary project without any individuals owning or renting the piece of land or building on it using concrete, Ayoub said.
At least 80 percent of Lebanon’s shoreline is privatized, and public access is denied with more than a thousand transgressions recorded, according to a 2012 Ministry of Public Works and Transport study.
“Public property equals public money and therefore public money is placed in the hands of one individual,” Ayoub said. “This is against the law and very dangerous.”
Farid Abi Younesm an architect who was born and grew up in Amchit, spends most of his time on the town’s public beach and is keen on safeguarding its ecological treasures which contribute to its rich history and touristic features. He said he was fast to file charges against the new construction project to concerned ministries, including the ministry of tourism which sprang into action and halted all construction work until a site environmental impact report is released.
“I did not file a complaint against the people behind the project, individually, but rather against the construction project itself,” Abi Younes said.
Some of Amchit’s diaspora called home reminiscing about their time spent in their hometown and worrying over the seafront construction project, Abi Younes said. Amchit’s locals fear more violations and further privatization and investment of public beach to become the norm, he added.
“Every time there’s a project, whether private or public, whether it is a governmental or an individual initiative threatening the public interest, we will stand against it,” Abi Younes said. “We want to turn the caves into a nature reserve and we demand our beach to remain open for everyone.”
Horch Beirut Competition
As part of its efforts to reclaim public access to Horsh Beirut, and in line with its advocacy campaign to protect the site from all types of infringements, NAHNOO -in conjunction with POMED (Project on Middle-East Democracy) and BEIRUTIYAT, and under the patronage of the Order of Engineers and Architects (OEA) in Beirut, and in collaboration with the Urban Planners’ Association UPA, is launching a competition to solicit alternative visions that would strengthen the role of Horsh Beirut as an inclusive public space.
Nahnoo invites you, students and professionals (architects, landscape and urban designers, planners and other related environmental and urban design disciplines) to submit proposals for research, design and planning projects to unlock the potential of Horsh Beirut as a shared inclusive public space that will generate a sustainable and pedestrian friendly neighborhood.
Find the supporting documents in the Downloads section and apply through the online form. For further details contact [email protected].
First prize $30002nd prize $2000
3rd prize $1000
DEADLINE REGISTRATIONMonday 09/12/2019
DEADLINE SUBMISSION
Monday 07/02/2019
Why Horsh Beirut
Located at the southern peripheries of municipal Beirut, Horsh Beirut represents the largest green public space in the city. Its area, originally extending over one million sq.m, diminished over time to a fenced isolated green triangle of 330,000sq.m, commonly known as Horsh Beirut today. The Horsh’s remaining parts are fragmented and distributed across the different surrounding urban areas. The triangular part resulted from post-war planning and related rehabilitation projects that transformed its original natural and flat design into an artificial and more complicated one with several zones and different topographic levels. However, the park remained closed to the public for thirty years and access was restricted to specific social groups until 2015 when it opened partially, following a five-year “Horsh Beirut for all” advocacy campaign led by NAHNOO. Yet, the Horsh’s development into a fully-functioning, easily accessible, and inclusive public park is today hindered by several factors: its disconnection from nearby neighborhoods through a network of high-speed roads, the absence of safe and easy pedestrian access to it, the shortage of proper equipment and urban furniture within the park, and the lack of appropriate and comprehensive strategies to protect its green area and turn it into a vibrant urban public space.