Lebanon has been designating protected areas and sites since the 1930's. Responsibility for such designation and conservation originally fell under the jurisdiction of what was then the Ministry of National Economy. This mandate has since been reallocated among several agencies including the Ministries of Environment, Agriculture, and Water and Energy, as well as the Directorate General of Antiquities under the Ministry of Culture. The state of the existing classification system for Protected Areas in Lebanon reveals an overall lack of a structured and national categorization of protected areas.  It identifies no legally formal PA categories in Lebanon subdivided into five groups of protected sites designated by different national authorities with no clear rationale or criteria for such grouping (table 1). Moreover, Arabic terminology did not follow pace with international nomenclature.

Table 1 The different categories for Protected areas in Lebanon

Since 1996, the Service of Protection of Urban Environment in the Ministry of Environment has been focusing on the management of Nature Reserves in Lebanon, which are continuously increasing, from 3 in 1996 to 10 in 2006, with regular requests submitted to the Ministry of Environment (MoE) for the declaration of new sites.

Stakeholders involved in protected areas management include the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Municipalities and Rural Affairs, municipalities, non-governmental organizations, scientific institutions as well as the local communities. This large set of stakeholders and complexity in governance of PA is lengthening the procedures and slowing reaction time. To date, and despite several efforts, all protected areas still depend largely on public funds to support both their conservation costs as well as the infrastructure for visitors.
In addition, to date, all available information indicates that conservation has been very successful at the most basic level of protecting the biodiversity and habitats of the reserves from well-known human pressures. Still, no functional monitoring systems for biodiversity assessment nor an overall conservation strategy defining conservation priorities have been developed.
Despite significant progress on the development of capacities to management of PAs, capacity development has been far below what it could have been. Furthermore, the laws creating and governing the reserves neither authorize the collection of entrance fees, nor do they grant the legal status for the reserve committees, which generated a number of problems related to social security status, eligibility to access international funding and donors, contracting management teams and ensuring a job security, property and ownership etc…

1. Agreement on the appropriate institutional structures for integrated protected areas management in Lebanon:  The current Protected Area Project has piloted the use of particular institutional mechanisms involving the MOE, Government-appointed Committees, NGOs and management teams. Positive as well as negative results have been observed, and there is a need to review the implementation and compare this with the best practice experience from other countries.

2. A detailed implementation plan (the Protected Areas Action Plan, indicating actions, time-frames and responsibilities, and a means for monitoring and evaluating progress): An agreed action plan with clear mandate to deliver is a powerful mechanism to drive progress forward, and ensure co-ordination and accountability of diverse institutional actors.

3. Appraisal of resource and capacity requirements to successfully implement the Protected Areas Action Plan: Incapacity is often the result of an uncoordinated approach with wasteful overlaps and unresolved gaps. This component will align existing capacity to key elements of the programme and identify key capacity deficits as well as means to develop lacking capacities.

4. Agreement on the sustainable funding structures for the implementation of the Protected Areas Action Plan: There are diverse sources of funding including funding from government, donors and revenue generation, but no adequate agreement or means to ensure that the funding envelope is strategically managed to secure an operational strategy.

5. Effective implementation of pilot components of the Protected Areas Action Plan; including key outputs for capacity-building, financing, protected area planning, protected area development and protected area management;

6. Effective management, administration and reporting structures to the EC and MoE;

7. Focused distribution of information to key stakeholders.

Answering a number of expressed needs in Protected Areas (PAs) Management in Lebanon, SISPAM project (2004-2006) has exerted efforts and presented legally sound solutions for several concerns related to proper and sustainable PA management especially : absence of clear rational and defined criteria for PA designation,  absence of overall national vision for Pas, irregular disbursement of supporting funds as well as dependency of governmental financial support, unplanified and non oriented trainings, lack of job security for Management teams and subsequent instability in PA management, rigid bipolar management structure, private landowners excluded from PA network, plight situation related to reporting and information sharing etc.....

The National category system for Protected Areas in Lebanon, emanating from a participatory approach (consultative meetings, round table, national workshop) resulted in suggesting for Lebanon four categories of Protected Areas with clear guidelines for designation and defined management bodies (table 2). Legal endorsement of those suggested categories will require approval of the draft decree defining criteria for PAs designation in Lebanon prepared by SISPAM in collaboration with ECODIT Liban.
Improvement of the pre-existing management structure resulted from a down up participatory approach extended on more than 3 years. It required reorganization of the work load and administrative tasks between the different directly involved parties: Ministry of Environment as tutelage body, Appointed Protected Areas Committee as supervision body, and Management Team as implementing/executive body; as well as redefining proper management policies and procedures. Concerning Nature Reserves (category A) and National parks (category B), those amendments, described in the management tool kit for Protected Areas Management (Policies and procedures, Job description) were introduced as amendments to the draft General Framework Law for Protected Areas, as well as in the draft decree for job description for PA staff suggested by Ministry of Environment to be accepted by the Council of Ministers and voted in the Parliament (for the draft law). This latter also settles clear criteria for APAC designation as well as it ensures proper job security to Management teams by enabling them to be registered in the National Social Security. The draft law has been prepared and shall be submitted to the Parliament for voting.

Task 2: National Action Plan for Protected Areas

As a result from several one to one consultation meetings, the round table and the National Workshop, SISPAM, in collaboration with ECODIT prepared a National Action Plan for Protected Areas. In order to properly endorse the action plan and ensure financial support by Lebanese Government (Ministry of Finance) for its implementation, a draft law program detailing required budget for each task as well as implementation schedule shall be submitted to parliament for voting. A set of Monitoring and evaluating indicators were developed in order to monitor management effectiveness at site level as well as implementation success of the NAPPA.

Task 3: Appraisal of resource and capacity requirements to successfully implement the Protected Areas Action Plan

Resulting from survey on available national resources in terms of integrated Protected Areas Management, a National Capacity Building strategy for Protected Areas management was designed. Aiming at improving its implantation over 5 years, a training unit within the Ministry of Environment should endorse this responsibility in order to assess training needs on yearly basis and ensure that adequate training sessions are duly followed up by concerned parties.

Task 4: Sustainable financing strategy for Protected Areas

In addition to a consolidated database highlighting international funding opportunities related to Environmental issues and specifically to Protected Areas, SISPAM project in collaboration with Khattar Torbey (legal and financial expert), developed a set of sustainable mechanism offering alternative financing options for the Protected Areas Sector in Lebanon. Those mechanisms are summarized in the Sustainable financing strategy for Protected Areas and detailed reports can be claimed directly at the Service of Protection of Urban Environment at the Ministry of Environment.

Task 5: Pilot implementation of key elements and adaptively management of implementation of Protected Areas Action Plan

In reference to the National Action Plan for Protected Areas (NAPPA), SISPAM project developed a log frame for timely realization of key elements, detailing activities that were executed in the framework of the project as well as an implementation schedule for forecasted activities.

Task 6: Effective management and reporting to EC

All progress reports, and the Interim report are available at the Service of Protection of Urban Environment/ Ministry of Environment, and the Final report and the Laymen’s report  are available for download.

Task 7: Dissemination of key outputs of the project

A set of key outputs, available as printed version, can be downloadable from SISPAM website as pdf versions, they enclose:

• National Action Plan for Protected Areas Management (english pdf version)

• National Capacity Building Strategy (English/ Arabic)

• Sustainable strategy for financing Protected Areas (English/ Arabic)

• Category system for Protected Areas in Lebanon (English/ Arabic)

• Conservation need in Mediterranean Wetlands (English pdf version)

• Management tool kit for Protected Areas including

- Monitoring and evaluation indicators for PA management (English pdf version)

- Job description for proper PA management (English pdf version)

- Policies and procedures for improved management (English pdf version)

• Management of Protected Areas in Lebanon (laymen’s report) (English/ Arabic)

Acknowledgments

Success is not something you achieve overnight, but something you become through collaborative endeavors and overcoming unexpected obstacles. The only road to achievement is that paved with perseverance, determination, and support. Even when merit is usually attributed to a single party, accomplishments can only be realized through the involvement of many hidden arms that provide the material and mental encouragements necessary for success. We acknowledge the devoted participation of the Service of Protection of Urban Environment at the Ministry of Environment in realizing SISPAM's objectives. We value the significant contributions provided by the UNDP team and EC Life who played an essential role in the endorsement of this project. We also direct our sincere appreciation to the APAC members, the management team, and all the project's staff and colleagues whose mutual cooperation facilitated the achievement of the project. Finally, we would like to thank all individuals and organizations who have contributed in any minor or major way to the project's success.