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Heat, Drought, Fires Threaten Lebanon’s Northern Forests 

A general view of a forest area in Kobayat in Lebanon’s northern Akkar region, on September 1, 2023. (AFP)
A general view of a forest area in Kobayat in Lebanon’s northern Akkar region, on September 1, 2023. (AFP)
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Heat, Drought, Fires Threaten Lebanon’s Northern Forests 

A general view of a forest area in Kobayat in Lebanon’s northern Akkar region, on September 1, 2023. (AFP)
A general view of a forest area in Kobayat in Lebanon’s northern Akkar region, on September 1, 2023. (AFP)

Heatwaves, low rainfall and the threat of wildfires are compounding the woes of people in the forested north of Lebanon, a country where economic pain has long taken prominence over environmental concerns.

After a blistering and dry summer, residents of the mountainous Akkar region near the Syrian border are voicing fears about climate change and water scarcity.

Farmer Abdullah Hammud, 60, has spent his life in the green hills of Akkar, growing everything from tomatoes to figs, but says environmental problems are now hurting his livelihood.

"I've never seen it this hot," Hammud said, looking at a field where he was planning to grow cabbage. "We lost part of the crops."

With Lebanon's mains water supply unreliable at best, he depends on a nearby spring for irrigation, but worries that the supply is falling.

Because trucking in water for his house and farm is not an option, he said, "if the water ran out, we would have to leave".

Rainfall has been below average this year in Lebanon, Mohamad Kanj from the meteorological department told AFP.

A 13-day heatwave last month was "the most severe recorded in terms of the number of days, the area affected and the exceptional temperatures".

Akkar was already one of Lebanon's most disadvantaged regions before the national economy imploded in late 2019, plunging much of the population into poverty.

A report from the American University of Beirut last year found the region also has only low-to-moderate resilience to climate change.

Devastating forest fires raged two years ago near the town of Kobayat, where houses are nestled among the trees in surrounding hills.

A 15-year-old died while helping to battle the flames.

"The fires affected us a lot," said Najla Chahine, 58, a former teacher. "We feared for our lives."

Green activism

Since those fires, "there's more awareness", said Chahine, noting however that the local community needs to work harder to face environmental threats because "the state is absent".

She and her son Sami were on a hike as part of a recent local festival.

Several dozen people clambered up and down tree-covered slopes carpeted with dry pine needles and cones.

Sami Chahine, 13, said he has tried to "raise awareness as much as possible" about environmental issues among his friends.

He expressed worry about fires, but also other ecological threats such as pollution, in a country where people often burn trash at informal dump sites and recycling is sporadic.

The hike passed several local springs, one reduced to just a trickle, another totally dry.

Antoine Daher, head of the local non-governmental Council of Environment -- Kobayat, blamed the water shortages on both a lack of rain and rising demand, urging people to reduce consumption.

Daher said his association set up Lebanon's first fire watchtower some 25 years ago and had sought to educate people on ecological topics.

Despite Lebanon's devastating economic crisis, he said, "we mustn't see the environment as a luxury".

Peak fire season

Fires remain a major threat, and Khaled Taleb from the Akkar Trail association was training a group on how to prevent and fight them.

"We are currently at the peak of the fire season," he said, warning that the risk only abates in late October.

His association, which now counts 15 volunteers, turned to firefighting in 2020 after major blazes hit the Akkar region.

The area is covered with 200 square kilometers (77 square miles) of forest and home to 73 out of Lebanon's 76 tree species, he said.

The fires near Kobayat in 2021 alone "destroyed more than 1,800 hectares (4,450 acres)", he said, recalling that water access was a major problem for his team.

In October 2019, the Beirut government's failure to contain devastating wildfires was among the triggers of an unprecedented, nationwide anti-government protest movement.

Lebanon "doesn't have the logistical capabilities to deal with a huge fire", said Taleb, whose group works alongside the civil defense and other first responders.

However, he expressed optimism at the local community's willingness to pitch in.

"We weren't born firefighters," he said, adding that until three years ago, "we didn't know anything about firefighting".

"But our main priority now is to protect the forest from all threats."

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Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
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Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)

For half a century, New York City residents have taken out their trash by flinging plastic bags stuffed with stinking garbage straight onto the sidewalk.

When the bags inevitably leak or break open, they spill litter into the street, providing smorgasbords for rats. In the winter, the trash mounds get buried in snow and remain frozen in place for days, sometimes weeks, reinforcing the city’s reputation as filthy.

Now, New Yorkers are slowly adjusting to a radically new routine, at least for America's biggest city: Putting their trash in bins. With lids.

Earlier this month, covered bins became a requirement for all residential buildings with fewer than 10 living units. That’s the majority of residential properties. All city businesses had to start using bins earlier this year.

“I know this must sound absurd to anyone listening to this who lives pretty much in any other city in the world,” said Jessica Tisch, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, who oversaw the new measures before becoming the city's new police commissioner this week. “But it is revolutionary by New York City’s standards because, for 50 years, we have placed all our trash directly on the curbs.”

Residents who've already experienced trash containerization elsewhere agree it's long overdue for New York City to catch up.

“You see plastic bags open with the food just rotting and stinking and then it leaking out over the sidewalk and into the road,” said John Midgley, who owns a brownstone in Brooklyn and has lived in London, Paris and Amsterdam. “Just the stink of it builds up, you know, week after week after week.”

New York City's homes, businesses and institutions put about 44 million pounds (20 million kilograms) of waste out on the curb every day, about 24 million pounds (11 million kilograms) of which is collected by the city's sanitation department. Much of the rest is handled by private garbage carters.

In the early 20th century, New York City required trash to be placed in metal cans. But in the era before widespread plastic bag use, refuse was thrown directly into the bins, making them filthy and grimy.

Then in 1968, the city’s sanitation workers went on strike. For more than a week, trash cans overflowed. Garbage mounds piled high on sidewalks and spilled into the streets like some dystopian nightmare.

Plastic bag makers donated thousands of bags to help clean up the mess, and New Yorkers never looked back, said Steven Cohen, a Columbia University dean specializing in public affairs.

“It had to do with convenience,” he said. “After the strike, the sanitation workers preferred the modern advance of lighter and seemingly cleaner sealed plastic bags.”

Plastic kept more odors in, compared to the old metal bins. A worker could grab the neck of a bag and easily fling it into a truck.

But Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has deemed trash bag mounds Public Enemy No. 1 in his well-documented war against the city's notorious rats.

Rats have little problem getting into a plastic bag. Durable bins with closing, locking lids should, in theory, do a better job of keeping them out.

The bin requirement, which took effect Nov. 12, comes with its own challenges. Among them: Finding a place for large, wheeled bins in neighborhoods where most buildings don't have yards, alleys or garages. Landlords and homeowners also have to collect the empty bins and bring them back from the curb in the morning — something you didn't have to do with plastic bags.

Caitlin Leffel, who lives in Manhattan, said residents of her building had to hire someone “at surprisingly high cost” to bring out the bins the night before and bring them back in three times a week.

“I know there are problems with the way this city has collected trash for years,” she said. “But the way this program has been rolled out, it has not taken into account many of the nuances of living in New York City.”

Building superintendents are also grumbling about the added work of bringing bins back from the curb.

“It’s completely rearranged our lives,” says Dominick Romeo, founder of NYC Building Supers, a group of building managers that recently rallied in front of City Hall against the new requirements. “Folks are running around like crazy.”

Eventually, the largest residential buildings — those with more than 31 units — will have their own designated container on the street. New trash trucks built with automated, side-loading arms — another innovation that is already common in many other countries — will then clear them out.

The upgrades should make pickups easier and cleaner, even if it might take longer for trash collectors to make the rounds, says Harry Nespoli, president of the union representing some 7,000 city sanitation workers.

For now, he says, workers are still tossing trash into their trucks manually, which has its own downsides.

“Some places, they’re not even using bags. They're just putting their trash into the bins,” Nespoli said. “It's going to take time to get everyone to do it the right way, but at the end of the day, it's our job to pick it up.”

Tisch believes New Yorkers will eventually come around to the new reality.

City officials, for now, are issuing written warnings for non-compliance. Not everyone knows about the new rules yet. But come Jan. 2, fines ranging from $50 to $200 will kick in.

“No one wants to live on a dirty block,” Tisch said. “No one wants to walk past a heaping mound of trash and trash juice when they are leaving to go to work or they are walking their kids home from school.”