Climate change is now affecting every country on every continent. It is disrupting national economies and affecting lives, costing people, communities and countries dearly today and even more tomorrow.
People are experiencing the significant impacts of climate change, which include changing weather patterns, rising sea level, and more extreme weather events. The greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are driving climate change and continue to rise. They are now at their highest levels in history. Without action, the world’s average surface temperature is projected to rise over the 21st century and is likely to surpass 3 degrees Celsius this century—with some areas of the world expected to warm even more. The poorest and most vulnerable people are being affected the most.

Climate change is the global phenomenon of climate transformation characterized by the changes in the usual climate of the planet (regarding temperature, precipitation, and wind) that are especially caused by human activities. As a result of unbalancing the weather of Earth, the sustainability of the planet’s ecosystems is under threat, as well as the future of humankind and the stability of the global economy.

Over the past two decades, Lebanon has actively worked on improving its capacity to adapt to and mitigate climate change. The country has actively participated in the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Lebanon’s overall GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions are minimal compared to other countries due to the country’s size and relatively small industrial sector.

The university, through the strategy it adopted, has been working to reduce the effects of climate change through the adoption of several policies, including relying on green spaces outside and inside the university campus to reduce the percentage of carbon, interest in afforestation of the surrounding lands and motivate students to care about the environment by engaging them in multiple activities aimed to protect the environment and educate them environmentally through holding several seminars and workshops aimed at introducing them to the effects of climate change and the available means to reduce its negative effects on the environment and people.

13.4 Commitment to carbon neutral university

IUL encourage the community, staff, students and Alumni to reduce their carbon footprint by different ways including

• Participating in tree planting days held annually across the different campuses
• Funding innovative sustainable ideas
• Helping to reduce waste to landfill by supporting recycling systems installed across IUL facilities.

13.4 Commitment to achieve carbon neutrality at the university: Achieved already in (indicate year)

II. The national greenhouse gas inventory of 2015

The preparation process of the national Greenhouse Gas inventory Introduction Lebanon has produced three National Communications (NC) (submitted in 1999, 2011 and 2016) and two Biennial Update Reports (BUR), submitted in 2015 and 2017, each containing a national Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory. The last GHG inventory, reported as part of Lebanon’s 2nd BUR, covers a time series from 1994-2013 and was compiled using the Revised 1996 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. The inventory in the current BUR extends the time series analysis to 2015 and uses for the first time the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. The inventory was compiled using the IPCC software version 2.54. Cycle and institutional arrangements The GHG inventory is an integral part of the BUR3/4NC project funded through the Global Environment Facility’s (GEF) enabling activity and managed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Lebanon. The Government of Lebanon (GoL) through the Ministry of Environment (MoE) provides in kind support for the project. The overall coordination of the project is handled by the climate change office, which is part of the Service of Environmental Technology at MoE. The Ministry is the institution responsible for the preparation and submission of BURs and National Communications to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The GHG inventory compilation team is located at the climate change office and is financed on a project basis. The retention of the compilation team therefore depends on the ability to continue finding international funding. Although the current BUR is being submitted in October 2019, the completion of administrative procedures to access the GEF fund dedicated to the project was completed in June 2019 due to delays in issuance of grant approval Decree, which has put the team on a very tight deadline.

 The BUR and GHG inventory team consists of two members, of which one has been involved in the compilation of the GHG inventories submitted in 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2017 and the other in the 2015, 2016, 2017 inventories. Both staff members are working on other climate-related topics, i.e. are not devoted to GHG inventory compilation full time. Both experts have a good understanding of the IPCC methodologies, and one of the experts has served as a UNFCCC reviewer for National GHG Inventories (Energy Sector) and has participated in a number of reviews, including as lead reviewer.

Previous GHG inventory compilation cycles were supported by consultants, e.g. for data collection, results analysis and drafting of GHG inventory chapters. The present inventory has been completely compiled in-house, using external international and national reviewers for quality assurance only. Despite the extensive involvement of the BUR/NC compilation team, consultants’ previous work was not always sufficiently documented to be able to build on the findings in consequent GHG inventory cycles. This situation compromised:

1) the time efficiency of updating GHG inventories for a few years, as a lot of efforts are deployed to find the sources of data and the right contact persons,

2) the accuracy of some figures as the efforts to replicate approaches used by consultants were not always successful, hence the need to use expert judgement or extrapolation methodologies. This situation is gradually improving as GHG inventory compilation activities are being taken up by the Ministry of Environment – Climate Change Office, and as the latter has initiated several data sharing agreements with relevant institutions. Intensive stakeholders and key data holders consultations are conducted during the process, building on existing institutional arrangements.

During the GHG inventory preparation process, attempts to abide by a pre-defined GHG inventory cycle have been compromised by various delays in access to funding, access to data, or enabling political environment. These delays affect the approach of data collection, which is mostly undertaken on an ad-hoc manner (as opposed to having a restrained data collection phase) and decrease the time spend and efforts invested in improving methodologies, data validation, Quality Assurance/ Quality Control (QA/QC) and uncertainty analysis.

Figure 4 summarizes the institutional interactions in place to collect, verify and input data. For the first time during the compilation of a GHG inventory, appropriate and comprehensive data collection templates were established and adopted upstream (more details in section 1.3 below) and data sharing agreements with data providers were initiated.

Data sharing modality for the energy sector:

 The Management of Information System for Climate Action (MISCA) A pilot information management system has been established in 2017 to facilitate the sharing of activity data between the inventory compilation team at the Ministry of Environment and different experts at the Ministry of Energy and Water. The Management of Information System for Climate Action (MISCA) has been developed based on the 2006 IPCC guidelines where activity data, emission factors and other energy-related parameters are entered as input and GHG emissions (using both the reference and sectoral approach), indirect emissions and emission trends are computed and published as outputs. All calculations are based on tier 1 methodology, with fuel- specific Net Calorific Values (NCV).

The system includes different level of users, who are the operators within the platform. They are category- related with different rights within each category: the super administrator is responsible for entering emission factors and parameters and has the permission to access and edit all worksheets; the data entry operator is responsible for entering the activity data; the data validation operator is in Lebanon’s Third Biennial Update Report to the UNFCCC 16 charge of QA/QC; and the data release operator is a high-level official in charge of releasing the data. The system is composed of “grids”, which are the working units within the platform and based on which the calculation is done. Sessions are opened every year (around April) and include a new cycle of data entry, data validation and data calculation for all grids for a specific year.

The system is currently hosted on a cloud but will eventually be transferred to the servers of the Ministry of Environment. MISCA has only been developed for the energy sector so far with the aim to expand it to include other IPCC sectors and national partners relevant to them. In addition, MISCA has a key function related to tracking implementation of mitigation actions and Lebanon’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). A memorandum of understanding has been developed to institutionalize the sharing of data, and accordingly, training sessions and one-on-one mentoring sessions have been organized to build the capacity of the different users to use the system.

MISCA has been tested using information of the energy GHG inventory for the year 2015. Concurrently, emission calculation has also been performed using the IPCC software to validate the results and identify bugs and errors in the pilot version of MISCA. A list of improvements to be made to MISCA is being compiled in order to operationalize this platform as soon as possible.

 

Lebanon under Climate Change What to expect in 2030?

 

Table 1. Commitment to carbon neutral university: Achieved 

Commitment to carbon neutral university
13.4.1	Commitment to achieve carbon neutrality at the university: Achieved already in	2016

 

Since the foundation of its campus in Wardanieh in 2016, the university has committed itself to achieve carbon neutrality by adopting vast green spaces due to their importance in reducing the carbon level and increasing the oxygen level. 

The university has also adopted public transportation for students, keeping car parks away from buildings, and adopting renewable energy as a primary source in securing electric power. 

 

Table 2. Commitment to carbon neutral university: Achieve 

Commitment to carbon neutral university
13.4.2	Commitment to achieve carbon neutrality at the university: Achieve by	2025