New Economic Policies: Instruments for Water Management in Lebanon

Social, economic and environmental aspects should be taken into consideration for IWRM implementation in Lebanon. This would be helpful to formulate policies required for improving water sector. Likewise many countries, Lebanon do not implement water policies on the formal level. This is critical since policies are initiative for legislation, strategic planning and operational management. Hence, water resources in Lebanon are threatened by population growth and climatic variability and imbalanced supply/demand. Thus, the interrelation between supplier and consumer should be harmonized since there is large amount of water is lost due non-uniform water supply and partitioning approaches, besides lack of awareness and absence of wise-use of water resources. Therefore, economic policies should be adopted in Lebanon and water pricing must be set to give incentives to user for efficient water use in their various applications. Thus, treating water as an economic good recognizes that water carries an opportunity cost. This paper presents the existing economic status of water in Lebanon in the absence of legal economic policies. It, therefore, extends new Economic Policies Instruments (EPIs) is required for better IWRM.