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Of course, this dramatic decline is not destiny. According to the thinking tools and the intellectual and material capacities of the official and the citizen, the result will be. The problem is not only how to select officials in this field, especially environment ministers. It is in the structure of the government and the ministry in question. It goes deeper and extends to the “many” thoughts of concepts, visions and philosophies that are adopted without scrutiny. The problem is also technical. Not in the sense of the weakness of the techniques or technologists used, but in how to benefit from their specialized experience and guide them according to the approved strategies. This also means that strategic thinking is not technical thinking, and that it is necessary to seek the help of strategic thinkers, just as technologists are employed, which did not happen with us for more than a quarter of a century … until that we enter this cycle of emergencies and costly solutions for the economy, the environment and public health. Based on that, we are not supposed to ask ourselves today how we enter a system of repeated crises from one government to another and from one era to another.
In this government, before moving to the provisional stage, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers formed a “technical committee” to consult the corresponding ministerial committee for its opinion and proposals. By the way, it is similar to the committee that was formed after the 2015 and 2016 crisis after the closure of the Naameh landfill, and at that time it approved the approval of the new Burj Hammoud and Costa Brava landfills, after the accumulation of waste in the streets and the launch of popular movements at that time. The problem is not in the technicality of these committees, nor in the experience of their members in handling emergency situations or in the search for technical solutions … Rather, it is always in avoiding discussing the strategy that was supposed to be would adopt and that was supposed to translate into sustainable laws and plans. And when he was faced with this aspect of deficiency, he was quick to say that it is classified as a technical only and does not discuss strategies or sustainable solutions, and the problem is referred to the Ministry of the Environment, which is supposed – according to the law of its creation – develop environmental strategies. Note that historically the obstruction of the development of the strategy comes from the ministry itself, with the ease of adopting the developed plans! These are plans that are generally made with committed contractors who don’t need strategists. These plans fit more in the mind of the “boycotting” politician and middleman than of the responsible politician in a state. That is why the 2006 plans, alternatives to the emergency landfill plan for Beirut and Mount Lebanon that were established in 1997, were in line with the sectarian clientelist system, as Lebanon was divided into treatment and service centers according to the sectarian territorial division, with two landfills for Beirut and Mount Lebanon (instead of Naameh), the first at the Habalin landfill in Jbeil, the second in the region. It is the same suggestion that the Director General of the Ministry recently made to Minister Damianus Katar when he returned to his aid, after excluding the four previous ministers! The minister became more confused and hesitant until the moment of his resignation, while no other “technician” offered him anything other than to reopen the Naameh landfill or expand the new one. We do not vindicate this brief historical vision of carrying the responsibilities now, but rather to indicate the persistent misunderstanding about concepts. The sustainable plans that were proposed as an alternative to these contingencies were not. Otherwise, there is a misunderstanding of the meaning of sustainability. Creating landfills that satisfy the sects or tailor them to the areas they distribute (the proposed 25 landfills for all of Lebanon) that have greater capacity does not mean a sustainable solution.
Originally, the concept of environmental sustainability fits within a different philosophy than monotheistic religious philosophies. Environmental philosophy speaks of a new human being who considers herself part of nature, not above it or its center. It is not the man who has guessed himself or has considered himself created in the image and likeness of God. It is a philosophy that calls on the condescending and fearful person to be disgusted by their excrement, to humility and concern for their waste while worrying about their food. And consider waste treatment as part of your daily life cycle. He had to admit that what he used to throw behind him and walk around, he was throwing in the faces of other people and other generations, and that those wastes will come back to us and them in our diet sooner or later. This philosophy, which also means a return to the original sense of the economy, which was based on saving and recycling, rather than on manufacturing, consumption, disposal and recycling. Whenever we go back to the heart of the problem that has transformed us into consumer societies, we import and consume everything, both goods and concepts, without knowing it. We import ready-made concepts such as sustainability, as well as strategies and laws, and formally translate them, ignoring this philosophy that is more compatible with nature, so we lost the economy, nature and ourselves together. The result was also that we have only reaped successive crises and disasters that lead to major disasters. Has the time come, after this further prolongation of the waste crisis that has become the equivalent of paving the road that leads to hell, to pause and go back a bit to rethink the translated concepts we have adopted, while rebuilding the sponsoring and trusting state of resources and preserving current and future human rights?
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