By Lysandra Ohrstrom
Special to The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Garbage, and what to do with it all, is one of the biggest environmental issues in Lebanon today. "Landfills are full, we have a few compost plants, but we don't treat solid waste," said Nadine Haddad, research officer with Environment and Development Magazine. "Lebanon is facing big solid waste problems." In an effort to tackle the problem, Environment is sponsoring the Second Regional Training Workshop for Municipalities on Environmental Management, which kicked off Monday at the Meridien Commodore Hotel. The program brings together municipal leaders from seven countries, including Bahrain, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon, to learn about alternative strategies of environmental management and to share information on current practices.

The focal point of the workshop was Tuesday's lecture on "The Dutch Experience in Municipal Solid Waste Management," sponsored by the Dutch Embassy in Lebanon and the United Nations Environment Program. Haddad said the point of this seminar was to train local and regional municipalities to deal with their solid waste.

Dick Hoogendoorn, the former Director of Waste Management in the Netherlands, discussed his program in the hopes that Lebanon could benefit from their successes and failures.

He said that in the 1980s the Netherlands was forced to address similar environmental issues as those facing Lebanon and Middle East today. The Dutch were forced to reform their waste legislation because the landfills were full and no monitoring committee was in place to oversee them. The incineration system also flawed because bio-waste was not separated before disposal, as is the case in Lebanon. The burning of organic and inorganic materials together produced high levels of dioxin, which is bad for people's health.

The Dutch government decided the status quo could only be altered by combining behavioral change with scientific reform. This required a campaign on the national level to raise awareness and a commission to ease communication between municipalities and the central government and monitor compliance with environmental laws.

"We look to the Dutch experience for advice on how to combat environmental problems," said Dr. Habib El Habr, The UNDP's deputy regional director. "They went through a lot of trials to find a solution that was adaptable to their environment, hopefully we can learn from their mistakes."

Hoogendoorn's lecture also discussed how the Dutch scenario exposed the friction between local and central governments. This same conflict is the main impediment to regional environmental reform, since waste policies are administered locally, at the discretion of municipal leaders in most developing countries.

Even when the central government has implemented stringent environmental standards, as in Jordan, most countries in the region lack effective monitoring or enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance.

Khalid al-Fayez, the Head of the Solid Waste Division for the Jordanian Environment Ministry, agreed that one of the biggest obstacles for Lebanon is the lack of accountability for each municipality.