A Brief History of Lebanon’s Downfall — and our Plan for its Regeneration
Farms Not Arms is a collective of designers, farmers, strategists, & agriculturalists working to build an integrated, multi-agricultural educational farm model that heals our lands, our health, and our communities. Through a human-centered, systems-focused design process, we built a highly-efficient and productive farm model that brings refugees and the local population together to target nutrition, regeneration, and social cohesion. Our first farm will be located in Bekaa, Lebanon.
This article is part 1 of a 3-part series that describes the food and agricultural project we have been building.
The Syrian war has caused millions of refugees to flee Syria into its neighbor Lebanon, an influx now accounting for 25% of the entire Lebanese population. This migration has created enormous strain on a country that was already in trouble. Farms Not Arms initially set out to solely target refugee food insecurity in Lebanon, but during our initial research, refugees listed social tension as one of their biggest problems. They feared being attacked for operating a refugee-only farm.
In response, we expanded our focus to the whole country. Given that a refugee crisis does not happen in a vacuum, we wanted to also target existing tensions in the Lebanese host communities that existed long before the national Lebanese food security crisis began(more on this here.) Our new farm model became about reconciling both and generating a more resilient local food system while simultaneously helping at-risk populations coexist in adversarial societies through agriculture.
As our project evolved, Lebanon was sinking into further despair. Food insecurity had become a national crisis, banks ran out of money, jobs evaporated, xenophobia was at an all-time high and refugees were increasingly targeted as the government’s scapegoats. This rapid unraveling of the situation in Lebanon underscored the need for systems thinking in a human-centered design process, and demonstrated the state of constant flux that is inherent to social design.
This article goes into the systemic context that affected our farm design and the multifaceted underpinnings of our solution by framing the refugee influx within the deteriorating political, economic, and financial situations in the country.
Government of Nepotism
Lebanon has never healed from its 1975–1990 civil war, and has been stuck in a 30-year vicious cycle of one band-aid solution on top of the other. The government structure in Lebanon revolves around holding together a tenuous balance of power based on division and sectarianism, while constantly masking it as democracy and equitable representation of religious diversity in rule. In reality, the main governmental concern is keeping the same warlords in power, and running the country according to their interests while ignoring the wellbeing of the general masses.
With a government enmeshed in geopolitics and corruption, Lebanon has never properly worked on national development. Instead, it has become a proxy state with an economy entirely dependent on external forces, built according to the interests of incompetent and self-serving ruling elites. In its decolonization and post-wars rebuilding alike, Lebanon has always chosen laissez-faire capitalism, global trade, and openness to other countries to enhance its services, tourism, and banking sectors while neglecting its productive agriculture and industry sectors. This has resulted in an economy at the mercy of the global market, vulnerable to domestic and international shocks with no cushion to sustain itself in dire times.
Systemic ‘Clusterfuck’
Decades of dysfunctional political rule have placed Lebanon ahead of the curve in terms of disasters that might hit the world in the foreseeable future. Such unruly problems are being currently experienced all at the same time in what can only be described as a convoluted, unruly, and systemic ‘clusterfuck’ as every facet of the country is falling apart in an intricately interlinked, never-ending vicious cycle. Some of these complex problems include:
- Highest percentage of refugees in the world (25% of population) and no adequate strategy to deal with that influx. Refugees are seen as second-class citizens with barely any rights. They do not contribute to the economy because they are not allowed to work.
- A government running on nepotism, corruption, and tribalism/identity politics. A widening gap between the ruling elite and the demands of the general population.
- Financial Collapse: currency devaluation by over 80%
- Economic Crisis: capital controls where people cannot access their money in the banks, slashing the amount of disposable income they actually have and reducing their purchasing power.
- Hyperinflation: Prices of consumer prices of goods have increased by an average of 70.31% from July 2019 to July 2020 due to more expensive imports and inconsistent supply. Prices of food have climbed up by 55% on average in one year.
- Poverty: extreme poverty (living on less than $1.25/day) climbed 12% in 14 months, reaching 20% by February 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the situation, as the World Bank estimates that over 70% of Lebanon will be experiencing some form of poverty and food insecurity.
- The country with the 3rd highest debt-to GDP ratio in the world
- 80% of all goods in the country are imported
- Climate change causing extreme weather and accompanying wildfires
- Environmental Crises: Trash crisis since 2015 with the government unable to collect garbage off the streets; water pollution, with 70% of Lebanon’s water sources polluted; air pollution that contains over 3 times the WHO’s maximum levels of particulate matter; destruction of valleys and natural resources by the government
- Health crisis: Highest percentage of cancer in Middle East and top 10 in the world, increase in a multitude of chronic health problems
- Rampant privatization and no social security or safety net to ensure the offering of basic services such as health and education
- Bad infrastructure which doubles costs of everything, as the population has to pay private providers while also paying public bills for services such as electricity. Constant traffic, making the whole country inefficient, with investments in ill-designed bridges that end up creating even more traffic than solving it. No public transportation and overuse of cars
- one of the largest non-nuclear bombs in history erupted on August 4th, 2020 that destroyed half of the capital city and the blame is on the government’s negligence
… and much more
Seeds of Change
This multifaceted, multigenerational corruption is long overdue for change. The post-war, millennial generation has been leading massive protests and an ongoing revolution since October 17, 2019. This is a generation that is widely educated but severely unemployed, underemployed, and underpaid, one where 1 in 10 people is an engineer but is only paid $1000 upon graduation. The popular uprisings called for total systemic change and rebuilding of a more equitable, non-sectarian country. Protests have only intensified, even braving coronavirus, in the face of hunger due to hyperinflation, capital controls, and currency devaluation that have been unraveling since the start of the year.
To add more fuel to the fire, Lebanon witnessed one of the biggest blasts in history on August 04,2020 that shook the country and the world alike and left the capital city destroyed. The culprit was yet again the government’s corruption and incompetence that left 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate illegally stored at the main seaport of Beirut for over 5 years. This further enraged the revolution and the urgent need for systemic change in the country.
Global Testing Ground
Lebanon could be an ominous warning, but this multidimensional, complex, systematic failure of Lebanon acts as the best playground to design, test, and build holistic, systemic solutions that will be increasingly necessary globally as society adapts to the new challenges of the 21st century. Even though things are getting worse in the early 2020s, both in Lebanon and globally, Farms Not Arms sees this as an opportunity for creative destruction that will birth new systems that benefit humanity and the world. It has become evident everywhere that the current system has to unravel in order to make way for something new that is built on more solid, equitable foundations.
The timing of the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest accelerator: it is accelerating the trends of the future, the shifts needed to adapt and flourish, while also exacerbating the problems, inequalities, and everything that is not working — making them burst so we can correct course and rebuild. In a way, it is forcing us to adapt to a future we were holding off. The massive shifts we have seen in financial, social, infrastructural, environmental, and political systems in such a short time might just give us a chance to reverse our imminent collapse.
A closer look at the problems of refugees and food security
Due to the convoluted nature of social problems, one has to look at wider trends and examine historical, political, and economic factors in order to determine what to do and how to position themselves. In the remainder of this article, we summarize some of our insights around the refugee crisis and the food crisis in Lebanon that have influenced our design.
Government of separation and ‘othering’ spills over to refugees
Since 2011, the Syrian refugee crisis has been a perfect scapegoat for politicians to blame their shortcomings and the problems that Lebanon is facing on people escaping similar corrupt governments. This proved successful, especially in a country that has gotten used to “othering” and has already institutionalized identity politics based on sectarian divisions.
The UN repeatedly asked the government to deal with the refugee influx for 4 years before it came up with a national response plan, leaving the host community and NGOs to handle it alone. The government’s neglect to develop a strategy led to more than 1 in 4 people in the country becoming a Syrian refugee by early 2015 and turned Lebanon into the country with the highest percentage of refugees in the world.
Almost a decade has passed since the start of Syrian refugee influx, and what originally felt like a duty by the host community to take care of others in the absence of solid government solutions has taken a huge toll on them. Having a 25% population increase without the right management was a palpable strain on natural resources, water, food, job opportunities, and infrastructure for the Lebanese community. This led to a 66% increase in overall poverty from 2011 to 2019, adding to the hardships faced by the local community and worsening social tensions and xenophobia.
Though the refugee crisis was definitely a huge toll on Lebanon, and indirectly led to its economic problems, the issue is not the people themselves: it is yet again the government’s response to it. Instead of dealing with a less-than-ideal situation, the government keeps refugees on the sidelines while stressing that the only solution is for them to leave.. Yet, the presence of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon for over 70 years is evidence that this an unpractical and unrealistic solution. By solely focusing on the ‘leaving’ rhetoric, the government has created a decade-long standstill and no still plan regarding Syrian refugees. Meanwhile, worsening social tension and scarcity of resources continues for refugees and host community members alike.
Inefficient Food System
Giving all the problems delineated earlier in light of the economic and financial collapse of Lebanon, food insecurity is the morbid reality of a majority of the population and the most pressing problem in the country. One glaring realization we had during our research is how inefficient food production is in a country with such abundant arable land. Lebanon imports around 85% of its food, even though 67% of its land is arable and capable of producing food. With the current economic situation, the ability to import, both on a government and private level, is increasingly constrained due to declining dollar reserves. At the same time, around 30% of the country works in agriculture in both informal and formal ways, yet they contribute to only 3% of GDP. Lebanon sits on land with enormous farming potential, but due to a history of poor economic decisions, the government created a food crisis by focusing externally and not investing in improving the efficiency of any local agriculture.
With this current reality, the need for localism, national self-sufficiency, and revamping current agricultural practices is paramount to mitigate food insecurity and economic decline that stems from dependence on external sources for food. The irony is that Lebanon had been the breadbasket of the Middle East since biblical times. It sits on fertile land that has long been abandoned due to economic systems that made it cheaper to import food rather than plant locally. Farming is seen as a poor man’s job and something to escape if you have the misfortune of being born a farmer. To add to that ironic reality, most Lebanese families own rural lands that can be cultivated but leave them barren and empty because they don’t see a profit in them.
Meanwhile, refugees constitute most agricultural labor in Lebanon while being unable to afford the very food that passes through their hands. 89 % of Syrian refugees in Lebanon were food insecure in 2015, a figure that has increased from 68 % in 2013 and continues to trend upward. Syrian refugees are almost completely dependent on food aid, provided primarily by the World Food Program’s cash-for-food voucher program as well as the randomly-distributed UN cards of $27/month. Their purchasing power for food is very limited and the foods they buy are usually not nutritious or high quality and filled with hormones and pesticides, further complicating their nutritional diet needs and leading to health problems and stunted growth among refugee children.
Systems Mapping
Given these drastic changes in the Lebanese situation from when we started this project, we can no longer focus on food security and social cohesion with host communities as separate goals: they have become interlinked. In building our solution, we took all of the above and more into consideration to design a systems map of factors, agents, and changes that can influence our work, and that we can also influence accordingly.
We started with a draft map (above) to play around with the system then turned it digital.
Setting the stage for solution-building
Inclusive solutions are the only real solutions
Some people might think that in the midst of economic collapse and a food security crisis compounded by a global pandemic, it is the worst time to help refugees. They might argue that no one cares about refugees when a country’s own citizens are hungry. Yet, with Lebanon at such a pivotal point, rebuilding the country without dealing with the refugee crisis is just another band aid solution. To truly build a resilient country, we have to coexist, live harmoniously with each other and with the land — and with whoever is on it, whether they were born here or not.
Lebanon’s recent history has been one of scarcity, of fighting over resources, of scrambling to build a country in the cracks while those cracks keep on getting wider. We see the food system as pivotal in creating this change to an abundant future and this starts today. We do not, by any means, think that our project is a full solution for Lebanon’s problems, far from it… but it is a start, targeting the immediate and tangible epidemic of food insecurity By adopting an abundance mindset from the start and including refugees, we are paving the way for an abundance mindset where there is enough — and excess — for everyone.
Part 2 of our article series discusses the social implications of our solution while part 3 dives into the technical details.
Note: Farms Not Arms received special mention as a semi-finalist in the Food System Vision Prize and was awarded $25,000 by The Rockefeller Foundation for designing an inspiring vision for a nourishing and regenerative food system by 2050.
