The importance of protecting the Lebanese High Mountains: A preliminary ecosystem services assessment
Michele Citton*1, Sammy Kayed1, Moustapha Itani1, Salma N. Talhouk**1,2
1American University of Beirut, Nature Conservation Center
2American University of Beirut, Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences
*[email protected]
**[email protected]
This project is in collaboration with the Lebanese Advocacy Network for the Environment (LANE), a consortium of environmental actors in Lebanon let by the national NGO T.e.r.r.e. Liban. The project aims to promulgate a modern and efficient law to foster Lebanese high mountain protection and management.
Ecosystem services approach represents an assessment tool matching the scope of the LANE project. The scope of this research has been therefore to evaluate the status of the high mountain ecosystem services (areas above 1500 meters) with an integrated biophysical approach. The following ecosystem services are actively being mapped and explained by AUB-Nature Conservation Center with a target area focused on Lebanon’s high mountain:
- Habitat
- Water supply
- Nutrient cycling and Water purification
- Erosion prevention
- Carbon storage
- Pollination
- Recreation
- Natural Food Provision
The multi-methods integrated approach to assessing ecosystem services provided a strong evidence based background for protecting and sustainability developing, with and for rural villages, high mountain areas through policy and practice. The findings of this preliminary assessment are being included in the new draft for the law on extending the protected areas of Lebanese High Mountain.
The assessment report is available through the link below:
Mapping Ecosystem Services to address Sustainable Development in the MENA region: The case study of Lebanon.
Michele Citton1*,George Mitri3, Sammy Kayed1, Moustapha Itani1, Sam Khattar1, Salma N.Talhouk1,2**
1American University of Beirut, Nature Conservation Center
2American University of Beirut, Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences
3University of Balamand, Land and Natural Resources Program, Institute of the Environment
*[email protected]
**[email protected]
This project is led by the American University of Beirut in collaboration with the University of Balamand.
Environmental richness in terms of ecosystem services is a keystone for sustainable development, particularly in rural areas. The rapid progress in ecosystem service mapping worldwide is positioning ecosystem services as a powerful decision-making tool to address sustainability from a local to a global scale. This study aims to evaluate the potential for rural socio-economic development at a national scale in Lebanon through ecosystem service mapping and link the results to the Lebanon MDI vulnerability map developed by the UN.
While international organizations and researchers developed a great number of tools to evaluate environmental richness and deprivation from a socio-economic perspective, few studies have unlocked the potential of ecosystem services mapping for this purpose, and to our knowledge, there are no such studies reported from the Arab Middle East. Lebanon is at the center of a severe humanitarian and environmental crisis linked to the rapid influx and the permanence of 1.5 million Syrian refugees after the 2015 conflict and a chronic environmental management deficit at the national level due to outdated regulations, poorly implemented policies and the burden of a consumerist culture.
The emergency and stabilization response to the Syrian Crisis from international organizations prioritized funding and interventions to the most vulnerable cadasters based on a revised Multi Deprivation Index, adapted from (Jordan et al.. 2000.). This approach did not address the potential for sustainable development in rural areas. Data for provisioning (food, freshwater), regulating (air quality), and supporting (habitat for species, biodiversity) ecosystem services, have been collected from local studies, national reports, and research papers; while cultural ecosystem services (recreation and tourism) have been collected from crowdsourced data from an ongoing program (Daskara). The research is still in progress, the result will be disseminated soon.