Water, water, everywhere – but not in Lebanon

If the by now constant threat of suicide bombings is not enough to get them down, the Lebanese have to contend with a sudden water shortage. I say sudden, but everyone except the state saw it coming.

Decades of appalling water management means we have grown used to making do in late summer, when supplies are used up before the first rains. But we are in February for heaven’s sake, a month in which we can normally shower, wash, launder, and mop with gay abandon.

I have lived in my building for 13 years and never once, even in the driest of summers – 2010 was a particular scorcher – found myself, as I did last week, mid-shower and soaped to within and inch of my life, to find the water suddenly stop. If we don’t get any serious rain pronto, I predict and economic and social catastrophe.

One would imagine that our newly formed government would make this crisis a priority, but it appears that the most pressing bee in the new cabinet’s bonnet appears to be how the Islamic Resistance (remember them?) fits into its policy statement.

No one has uttered a word on the drought, which even by Lebanese standards is shocking. So here’s my 10 cents worth to the new ministers who will surely be on the front line of the fallout in the coming weeks and months.

It goes without saying that the energy minister, Arthur Nazarian, should make the water shortage as much a priority as his oversight of Lebanon’s natural oil and gas file – probably the biggest red herring in our short but bumpy economic history – but there are at least eight other ministries that should be developing a strategy to cope with the drought.

Our health minister, Wael Abu Faour, should be concerned that there is no control as what is in the water many Lebanese are having to buy from unregulated private contractors. Quite where they get their water from is anyone’s guess but we’ll leave that detail for another time.

The agriculture minister Akram Shehayyeb should also worry. Despite Lebanon’s reputation for fine fresh produce, its agro industry – with the exception of hashish and grape farming – has been in disarray for the past decade, the victim of successive governments that have been unable or unwilling to develop a clear policy. A water shortage will surely exacerbate problems for a sector already on its knees.

Another department that can’t dodge this bullet is industry, headed up by the relatively capable and well-intentioned Hussein Hajj Hassan. With no water, and an already ongoing three-decade electricity crisis, what passes for our industrial sector will be severely tested. The cost of production will increase and jobs may be shed. It is a threat that also looms over the hospitality sector, which relies on a steady and clean supply of water in restaurants bars and hotels.

And let’s not forget offices, which may have to ration water and there will be days, perhaps even in the heat of August, when toilets will not flush. Not good for morale. So the labour minister Sejaan Azzi, tourism minister Michel Pharaon and economy minister Alain Hakim, you have all been warned.

Then we have the small problem of a couple of million Syrian refugees, who must surely fall under the remit of minister of the displaced Alice Shabtini (I mean they are displaced aren’t they?) the token woman in the cabinet. When the population increases by 50 per cent and the state has not taken measures to prepare for a drought … well I think you get the picture.

Enter the private sector. In December, the Civic Influence Hub, a non-partisan group that wants to change and develop “economic and social policies through civic influence … under the rule of law and institutions”, unveiled the Blue Gold for Lebanon initiative, which seeks to create a privatised water company as well as lobby for new legislation to properly husband our considerable water resources. It plans to create what it calls the Water Council of Lebanon and promises a substantial surplus by 2020.

In the meantime, I’m showering at my gym.

Michael Karam is a Beirut based freelance writer

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