Locations
Beirut Critical Environment Recovery, Restoration and Waste Management Program
Summary
The project entitled Beirut Critical Environment Recovery, Restoration, and Waste Management Program was launched in September 2022. It aims at responding to urgent and critical environmental issues arising out of the Port of Beirut (PoB) explosion on August 4, 2020, as well as mitigating public health and environmental risks. The Project’s interventions were more specifically designed towards the management and disposal of demolition waste generated from the damaged buildings and asbestos contaminated waste, as well as the rehabilitation of the damaged solid waste infrastructure and facilities that serve Beirut City along with the provision of technical assistance measures for the sustainable operation of facilities, support environmental control measures, and plan for longer term environmental restoration efforts in Beirut City.
The Project is financed by Lebanon Financing Facility (LFF) - a multi donor trust fund administered by the World Bank and is being implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in close coordination with the Ministry of Environment.
Background
The Port of Beirut (PoB) explosion on August 4, 2020, devastated the city of Beirut, killing at least 217 people, wounding more than 6,000 and displacing about 300,000 individuals. In addition to causing extensive damage to homes, businesses, infrastructure, and disrupting the city’s economic activity, the explosion has created multiple environmental challenges and extensive environmental and public health risks.
The presence of hazardous waste material that contains asbestos particles in various waste streams generated due to the explosion, poses direct and immediate threat to the population and overall environmental quality of Beirut given that infrastructure for the treatment and disposal of hazardous and chemical waste is absent in Lebanon.
The PoB explosion has also caused significant damages to the municipal solid waste management (SWM) infrastructure including Karantina Sorting Facility and Coral Composting facility both adjacent to PoB. The explosion has rendered both facilities non-functional, and all the waste generated in the region is now being disposed of in a sanitary landfill in Jdeideh – Bourj Hammoud area. This situation, in addition to being unsustainable, is rapidly consuming the available landfill capacity.
Project Outcome
The project development objective (PDO) is to support immediate environment management measures from impacts of PoB explosion of 4 August 2020 and support planning for longer term environmental restoration efforts in Beirut City.
The project includes three components as follows:
Component 1. Rehabilitation of damaged solid waste management infrastructure (Karantina and Coral Facilities) and management and containment of asbestos-contaminated debris generated due to PoB explosion.
Component 2. Policy and institutional support for greening Beirut’s Reconstruction Agenda, additionally including the preparation of a national inventory for hazardous waste and chemical stockpiles and assessment of national environmental laboratories and support to accreditation.
Component 3. Project management activities by UNDP as an intermediary agency, including (i) overall project management, fiduciary and safeguards compliance, (ii) conducting and managing necessary technical, financial, environment and social safeguard studies, and (iii) supporting technical assistance and institutional strengthening measures.
Grievance Mechanism (GM)
A Grievance Mechanism (GM) is a complaints’ mechanism consisting of a set of arrangements aiming at mitigating, managing, and resolving potential or realized negative impacts resulting from the LFF - Beirut Critical Environment Recovery, Restoration & Waste Management Program (P176635). A Grievance Mechanism effectively addresses grievances or answers any sort of questions from the affected stakeholders as well as the project workers.
Complaints can be submitted by phone, email. A complainant can also submit a grievance in person and directly to the Project Management Unit (PMU).
In addition, to properly manage the Project’s potential Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment (SEA/SH) risks, the Project Management Unit (PMU) prepared an action plan (in line with the World Bank Good Practice Note (GPN) for addressing SEA/SH in projects involving civil works. Thus, the project will ensure proper implementation of the action plan through monitoring, regular reporting and follow-ups with the consultants and contractors. Moreover, an SEA/SH Grievance Mechanism (GM) will include the same channels mentioned earlier for reporting any SEA/SH related incident and will also include referral pathways for the survivor’s care and protection. The GM will adopt a survivor centered approach and will treat all allegations in a confidential and safe manner.
For more details about the GM channels, the Sexual Exploitation and Abuse/ Sexual Harassment Prevention and Response Plan, the procedures, and the timelines refer to below link(s):
Grievance Mechanism - English Version
Grievance Mechanism - Arabic Version
Sexual Exploitation and Abuse/ Sexual Harassment Prevention and Response Plan
GESI Component (Gender Equality and Social Inclusion):
To address the barriers and constraints for GESI in the waste management system, the Project will ensure that both women and men are involved in the implementation of the different project activities. To do so, the Project will: (i) reach out to and inform women-led NGOs/groups on the opportunities offered under the project; (ii) encourage eligible women-led NGOs/groups to participate in the pilot implementation; (iii) provide technical (training, formalization, etc.) and/or equipment support to effectively operate and strengthen their implementation capacity; (iv) support the involvement of women groups or community-based organizations under the demonstration pilot(s) in the design of user-friendly measures meeting the specific needs of women and men in relation to waste management practices; (v) develop awareness campaigns on the pilot(s) targeting both women and men by using inclusive language/messages, information sharing through adequate channels as women’s groups/networks, etc.; (vi) develop a user feedback mechanism for identification of gaps/areas of improvement in service delivery which allows for sex-disaggregated information and analysis, and inform potential scale up.