Lebanon floods, 2024 - Forensic analysis

The UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR 2024) report presents 10 case studies, each one with a forensic risk analysis, which systematically examines and investigates the disasters to understand their causes and impacts, as well as the effectiveness of any mitigation measures.

Step 1: Understanding the disaster DNA

What happened?

After seven days of heavy rain in January 2024, two rivers in Northern Lebanon flooded simultaneously, covering a large area with mud and debris. Coastal roads were submerged, blocking food aid distribution and preventing some people from getting to work. Villages were isolated and cut off from essential services for several days.

Early warning prevented widespread loss of life, but the destruction was severe, flooding 3,000 houses and 850 informal settlements, affecting a total of 10,000 people, including many refugees from Syria. It was the region's largest flood in more than 20 years.

Exposure: Where was damage concentrated?

The flooding affected the districts of Tripoli and Akkar, both in northern Lebanon. The El Kabir River, which marks the Syria-Lebanon border, flooded south into Lebanon, while the Ostouane River also overflowed. When the two rivers breached their banks in several places, the floodwaters devastated vast areas across Lebanon's agricultural Akkar plain. Most households in the flood zone suffered damage.

Despite the risks of flooding, the size of urban settlements had more than doubled in the past two decades, partly due to the influx of refugees from Syria. This urban growth highlighted the complex relationship between population dynamics, lack of policies, and extreme poverty.

Roads and highways turned into rivers, trapping many cars and small trucks. The flooding also impacted local businesses and services. In Akkar, hundreds of Lebanese and Syrian families were evacuated to temporary shelters such as schools and mosques, while some residents had to be rescued by boat.

Rural areas were also heavily hit. More than 70 percent of people in the region rely on agriculture and livestock for their livelihoods. The floods covered some 8,000 hectares of agricultural land, destroying crops, as well as agricultural equipment and infrastructure. The loss of these assets impacted employment and income, especially for the poorest households.

The floods also brought new dangers into the flood zones, lifting mines out of Syria and scattering them across the riverbeds.

Vulnerability: Who was affected and why?

The floods underscored how poverty exacerbates risk. More than 90 percent of the area's population was living in poverty, while Lebanon was also suffering from hyperinflation and high unemployment at the time. Most families had few financial reserves and almost none had flood insurance.

Poorer communities were less able to respond, mitigate, and recover. They had less options for evacuating to higher ground or safer areas and less access to transport. Their housing was of poorer quality and less resilient. The most affected individuals were often unemployed, had limited access to basic services, and were lacking proper healthcare.

This pattern is not uncommon. World Bank analysis of major disasters finds that the poor lose two to three times the relative amount of their relative wealth because their assets and livelihoods are so vulnerable. These asset losses often translate into income losses too.

Of all the people affected, some 2,000 were registered refugees. Even before the floods they had been unable to afford their basic family needs and were heavily reliant on humanitarian aid. They were the worst affected.

Accounting for 29 percent of the flooded populations, most refugees were living in tent housing, often in informal refugee camps on the outskirts of villages. Their tents offered little protection against the flooding and their informal settlements became uninhabitable. These settlements had not been planned in any coherent way, but the refugees benefitted from lower costs and easy access to both agricultural land and to the rivers. As a result, their settlements tended to expand towards the rivers.

Besides being very vulnerable to flooding, the Syrian refugees also accelerated urban growth and thus the impacts of flooding. Many settlements in the area dumped their waste into the river and developed informal roads across the riverbed too, disrupting the morphology and flow of the rivers. Issues related to water and waste management, land encroachment, informal draining systems and road networks complicated the situation.

Meanwhile, flood management practices were uncoordinated and inadequate. Local farmers did little to protect themselves from flood risks and the construction of a large embankment on the Syrian side of the El Kabir River in 2011 added further imbalance to the levee system.

Resilience: what factors limited the impacts?

This case study highlights the lack of enforcement in various aspects of governance, including building codes and regulations intended to ensure the resilience of critical infrastructure and buildings against flooding. As emphasized, the poorest are always the most significantly impacted. The threat is particularly acute in places like Lebanon, which hosts many migrants and refugees who are often forced to stay in high-risk areas due to the scarcity of available land. Their livelihoods, if they have any, are vulnerable to extreme weather events.

Governments can and should choose to invest in resilience, and these floods demonstrated the need to do so. Building resilience involves the recognition of hazards such as flooding and taking the appropriate actions, including the construction of flood protection infrastructure, planning for potential relocation of communities in flood zones, and building awareness among local populations. Governments should also focus on implementation at the local level, working with communities, business, and non-governmental organisations.

In Lebanon, disaster risk reduction had been included in national strategies and laws, but these contained ambiguities and were often imprecise. Enforcement remains an issue.

Under the existing building code, for example, the government can impose technical requirements for construction in flood-prone areas and even deny building permits completely. However, the laws do not specify the risk criteria or technical specifications necessary.

Similarly, the Lebanese water law emphasizes the need to protect and preserve river environments and ecosystems, prohibiting development within river buffer zones. However, it fails to set clear physical limits, legal policies, and enforcement strategies appropriate to the level of existing risk.

Lebanon's ongoing economic crisis further undermined the government's ability to enforce these laws. Reflecting this ambiguity, insurance policies often failed to cover flood risks.

One significant step forward for Lebanon was the development of the National Early Warning System Platform (NEWSP). In collaboration with the National Council for Scientific Research in Lebanon, NEWSP uses satellite imagery and digital modelling to actively research and predict natural hazards. It also assesses risks to critical infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and factories. Its existence explains why so few lives were lost in the flooding.

Step 2: Future Trends:

This section looks at key root causes or emerging issues identified above and provides a snapshot of potential 'business and usual' trends where action now could prevent or reduce disasters in the future.

People

• Over the past decade, Lebanon - with a population of 5.2 million - has endured multiple crises, including political instability, the fast changing financial and economic situation, as compounded by the COVID-19 outbreak, the Beirut Port explosions, and the impact of the Syria crisis.
• In 2021, emigration numbers increased due to the multiple crises in the country. While this increased GDP through remittances which reached $7.3 billion in 2016, it also resulted in a brain drain of highly skilled Lebanese people. In 2018, literacy rates were 95.1 percent for adults and 99.8 percent for young people. By comparison, some 40 percent of Syrian youth in Lebanon were uneducated.
• Some 1.5 million Syrian refugees are living in Lebanon, with only 20 percent of those above the age of 15 holding legal residency. A 2023 UN assessment found that 84 percent of Syrian refugee families are living in extreme poverty, unable to afford the survival minimum expenditure basket (SMEB). Shelter conditions for refugees remain largely substandard.
• By mid-April 2024, the conflict in southern Lebanon and the Gaza had forcibly displaced around 93,000 Lebanese and secondarily displaced thousands of refugees. The development highlights political instability as a major driver of risk.

Planet

• Lebanon's changing rainfall patterns, which have been attributed to increasing temperatures, affect the frequency of intense rainfall events and alter catchments and drainage basins. Increased winter rainfall is leading to destructive flooding.
• Urbanization in Lebanon remains uneven and incoherent despite a slowdown due to the economic downturn. Urban design guidelines have yet to be updated so that buildings adapt to their surroundings and environment. Infrastructure development in areas like water, sanitation, and transportation still cannot keep pace with the needs of the urban population.
• If the 29 percent of openly dumped waste continues to go untreated, it could exacerbate future flooding events, particularly given the overflowing waste from Lebanon's 1.5 million informal settlements.

Prosperity

• In the space of a decade, poverty in Lebanon more than tripled to reach 44 percent of the total population by 2022. In Akkar, where most residents worked in the agriculture and construction sectors, the poverty rate reached 70 percent. Looking ahead, social safety nets will continue to play a critical role in helping households to meet their basic needs.
• Lebanon's severe and multifaceted crisis has seen Lebanon's economy contract by about 40 percent, with inflation in triple digits. Uncertainty has been very high and the outlook hinges on the authorities' willingness to implement overdue reforms.
• In the agricultural sector, the combined effects of climate change are expected to reduce the yield of irrigated crops by 0.3 to 8.7 percent and rainfed crops by 3.5 to 7.5 percent.

In many parts of Lebanon, livelihood diversity is minimal, and communities rely heavily on agriculture, which makes them highly vulnerable to such crop yield losses.

Step 3: Forensic Learning:

This section aims to encourage dialogue around the forensic analysis to foster improved decision making. The areas for consideration below are envisaged as an input to stimulate in-country discussion and action plan on future disaster prevention and enhanced disaster risk management.