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BACKGROUND
In September 2014, the Ministry of Environment (MoE), with support from the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), published the “Environmental Assessment of the Syrian Conflict (EASC) & Priority Interventions”, which provided an extensive analysis of the incremental environmental impacts of the Syrian conflict.
The main objective of this Updated Fact Sheet in 2015 is to provide an overview of the environmental situation vis-à-vis the impact of the Syrian conflict on the environmental resources one year after the assessment of 2014. The update is based on previous methods and findings presented in the EASC of 2014.
Similarly to the EASC of 2014 which was in line with Lebanon’s response to the Syrian conflict according to the “Lebanon Roadmap of Priority Interventions for Stabilization from the Syrian Conflict”, published by the Government of Lebanon in November 2013, this Updated Fact Sheet is in line with the “Lebanon Crisis Response Plan (LCRP)”, published by the Government of Lebanon in December 2015.
In the LCRP, the Government of Lebanon has projected that Lebanon will host a total of 1.8 million displaced persons in 2016, including 1.5 million displaced Syrians, 320,174 Palestinian refugees, covering Palestinians Refugees from Syria (PRS) as well as Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon (PRL), and 35,000 Lebanese Returnees from Syria.
Given that the EASC of 2014 has used a similar projection for displaced population as that of the LCRP (around 1.8 million as shown in Table 1), the Updated Fact Sheet has reported the same findings as those identified in the EASC 2014 in the sectors in which displaced population figures were used as a basis of the environmental assessment of the conflict. The sectors in which a different basis for the environmental assessment was used have shown changes in the environmental situation in 2015 as reflected in this Updated Fact Sheet.
Finally, it should be noted that in both years 2014 and 2015, Lebanon accounted over 1 million registered displaced persons, which constituted around 25 per cent of the Lebanese population and represented the world’s highest number of refugees per inhabitant.