An environmental SOS on World Environment Day

This World Environment Day, Lebanon’s environment situation tells a story that is difficult to look away from. According to the 2025 Pollution Index, Lebanon scored 89.6%, placing it among the worst-performing countries on the planet and at the very top of the region. Beirut has been ranked among the most polluted cities globally by the WHO, with annual PM2.5 air pollution concentrations running 142% above WHO safety guidelines. Air pollution alone costs Lebanon an estimated 3% of its GDP, according to a World Bank report. The country holds the highest rate of air pollution-related deaths in the entire Eastern Mediterranean region.

The Beiruter spoke with environmental expert Doumet Kamel, who did not mince words.

"Lebanon today has entered the era of visible catastrophe," he says. "The difference between 1950 or 1970 and 2025 is 180 degrees."

Poisoned from every direction

The scale of Lebanon's environmental crisis is not limited to one type of pollution. It is total, affecting water, air, soil, and sound simultaneously.

On water, the situation is, in Kamel's assessment, catastrophic. "Lebanon today lacks fresh water 100%," he says. "More than 70% of Lebanon's water is polluted, severely so. Between 30 and 40% of people are drinking heavily contaminated water treated with chlorine." The danger there is not just the contamination itself, but the treatment: chlorine reacting with organic matter in water produces trihalomethanes, or THMs, compounds classified as carcinogens. Lebanon's rivers, rather than serving as water sources, have become open sewers. "The Lebanese state itself says that Lebanon's rivers are dumping grounds for sewage," Kamel says bluntly.

The infrastructure meant to address this is either absent or decaying. More than 100,000 artesian wells exist across the country with no regulation. Over 50,000 of them are being used for sewage disposal, draining directly into groundwater. Along the coastline, more than 80 major sewage pipes discharge into the sea without any treatment. Wastewater treatment plants, brought into the country since the 1980s, are almost entirely non-functional. "The great catastrophe is that there are plants that are ready and available, and no one is using them or operating them," Kamel says.

A 2024 study published in the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, which assessed the pollution levels of Lebanon's 10 main rivers, confirmed the severity of the situation, finding widespread microbiological and chemical contamination that renders river water unsuitable for safe irrigation, let alone drinking.

The air crisis compounds the water crisis. Diesel generators, the Lebanese household's substitute for a state electricity grid that provides only a few hours of power per day, emit toxic particulates around the clock. An aging vehicle fleet, unregulated waste burning, and near-total absence of emissions controls have made Lebanese air among the most dangerous in the world to breathe. Respiratory illnesses, chronic allergies, and skin conditions are increasingly reported across the country, yet Lebanon still lacks comprehensive national data linking pollution directly to health outcomes.

Then there is solid waste, the crisis that made international headlines when Beirut's streets filled with garbage in 2015 and which has never truly been resolved. Illegal dumping sites operate across the country, many set on fire, releasing toxic gases into the surrounding atmosphere. Landfills operate without environmental standards. "Random waste dumps and fires produce dangerous gas disasters," Kamel says. Forest fires, worsened by drought and the presence of dry wood and rodents within forest areas, add another layer of destruction to a country that has already lost vast swaths of its cedar forests.

A state that watches

What makes Lebanon's environmental crisis particularly devastating is not the absence of solutions. It is the absence of will. Kamel is unambiguous about where the responsibility lies. When asked about what individuals and communities can do, he pivots immediately: "As a society, you cannot do anything when the state has lost control of everything. What are you going to tell someone who has a polluted river so contaminated you can't discharge from it?"

The problem is structural and political. Successive governments have treated environmental protection not as a public duty but as a budget line to be cut. Municipal oversight has been slashed. Environmental agencies are underfunded. Inspections are rare. And those who reach positions of authority often arrive without the technical knowledge to understand what they are overseeing. "There are people who have reached decision-making positions and don't know anything," Kamel says. "They destroy themselves, their career, and the country. We have all of this and it is the truth."

He calls for an urgent national plan: wastewater treatment infrastructure that is actually activated, regulated groundwater management, real enforcement against illegal dumping, and decision-makers who are accountable to the scientific and environmental reality on the ground. "I wish there were a live debate between me and the relevant ministers," he says, "so people could understand where each one stands intellectually."

A crisis too visible to ignore

Environmental degradation is no longer solely an ecological issue; it is a public health, economic, and social crisis affecting millions of people across the country. As pollution spreads across land, sea, and air, World Environment Day serves as a reminder that protecting the environment is not a future concern, it is an urgent necessity.