ONE UN - From Project Implementation to Policy Change - Building Water Resilient Cities (WUF13)

Okay.
I think we don't want to lose any more time, so I'm going to go ahead and get us started.
Thank you so much, everyone for taking the time to join us here today.
My name is Sarah Hess, and I'm an Associate Economic Affairs Officer and project coordinator with the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia based in Beirut, Lebanon.
And thank you for joining us to engage in this important discussion focused on how we move as one UN from implementing projects to making long term policy and practice impacts.
In this session today, the impacts that we'll be talking about may manifest as policy change or changes in the practice or process of policy making or changes in behavior with respect to water use and water management.
I think that all of my colleagues who work for the UN, eventually at some point in your career, you get asked, what impact is the UN really having in the field and is it lasting? As we put together this session, I think that's really what we're speaking to, particularly with respect to addressing water scarcity challenges in cities across the Arab region, many of which are confronting multiple challenges including climate change impacts, urban sprawl, displacement, and conflict.
And we see the UN working collaboratively as habitat, Esqui, UNICEF, and the resident coordinator offices to address some of these challenges.
Just to give you a few quick statistics on the urban water challenge or the water challenge in the Arab region, 19 out of 22 Arab countries fall below the renewable water resource scarcity threshold of 100 meter cubes per capita per year.
13 out of 22 Arab countries fall below the absolute water scarcity threshold of 500 meters cubes per capita per year, and there are more than 26 million people who are forcibly displaced in the Arab region.
Unfortunately, that number is growing and shifting every day with the regional instabilities.
And these are the challenges that we'll be speaking about today really from a solution oriented lens.
This session grew out of the resilient Water Solutions against climate change project that seeks to address the impacts of climate change on water scarcity in cities hosting displaced persons in both Jordan and Lebanon.
This project was funded by the Adaptation Fund with habitat acting as the lead implementing entity in cooperation with UNICEF, EsquiA and with support from the resident coordinators.
The project deploys a number of interventions, including the installation of rooftop rainwater harvesting infrastructure and greywater treatment systems, as well as promotes climate mainstreams urban planning and general awareness building around climate change impacts on water resources.
If you'd like to learn more about that particular project, my colleagues will be speaking about it, of course, but we also have a QR code here that you're welcome to scan.
You can access some of the policy briefs that we just published on some of these key themes such as greywater treatment systems, treated wastewater reuse and irrigation, permaculture, and those policy briefs are really designed to very quickly share the lessons that we learned in the field through this project and to expand those types of interventions to new geographies.
Without taking up any more time, I'm very excited to welcome our opening speaker, miss Sherri Anderson, who is the resident coordinator from the Resident Coordinator Office of Jordan.
She was appointed as the US resident coordinator in Jordan in 2023 and represents the UN Secretary-General at the country level.
She brings to this role more than 20 years of experience in crisis leadership and international affairs, including 15 years working in and on the Middle East.
She's also held senior positions with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OSHA, for nearly 15 years and served with UNICEF and the International Rescue Committee and has a really tremendous international experience.
So she's a great person to speak to the power of working as one UN because she's worked across so many areas.
Welcome, Sherri.
Thank you.
Hey, good afternoon, colleagues and you definitely don't go through my whole career because it's long and winding.
One thing that I would like to highlight is that I'm really proud of, particularly in this forum is I actually worked at a municipal government level prior to joining the UN.
For me, now that I operate at the intersection of everything that the UN does, not in one particular area, it's a unique privilege to come back to my roots and be able to speak about cities and territorial SDG acceleration and urban development because for me, this is my heart.
Actually, if you had gotten to the end of my bio, you would find that I have a master's degree in urban policy, work for the mayor's office in New York City for a while.
This really for me is a real privilege to be here and to speak about what the United Nations is doing in support of governments, national, local communities to ensure that we're accelerating SDG progress at every level of society.
So As was said, we know that the Arab region in particular is facing a number of interconnected pressures.
We have climate change, of course, intensifying water scarcity.
We have urban populations growing very rapidly in some places.
Displacement is placing additional pressures on services, infrastructural decline or damage in some countries requires major investments to recover.
Public services are not equally accessible to all people in all neighborhoods, and flash floods are damaging homes, infrastructure, and beyond where people are trying to build or rebuild their lives.
So for us, these are not abstract challenges.
They affect families, they affect municipalities, they affect local and national budgets, and the daily functioning of cities, which is why today's discussion really matters.
For us, this session, and I think what we hope to get out of this session is a real practical discussion around how do we test what can work on the local level and then scale that up to national services, national policies, national legislation because we need to prove the concept of what can work.
It's also a discussion today about how we do that in partnership.
As I said, the United Nations works in partnership with national and local authorities and with communities, looking to help countries move from evidence to action and from solutions to wider change.
Jordan is a country on the front line of this battle as the frontline of climate change and the global water crisis.
We are the second most water scarce country in the world.
Groundwater is being depleted at three times the rate of natural recharge, non revenue water, it stands at an estimated 48%.
Altered rainfall patterns are generating increasingly frequent and severe flash floods that damage homes, infrastructure, and sometimes even tourist sites, which for Jordan is important.
At the same time, Jordan hosts the second largest number of refugees in the world when measured at a per capita basis.
Most of these refugees live in cities.
They don't live in camps, taking into their needs and how they affect the urban space is absolutely critical to ensuring that we find solutions that truly work.
Climate change is not a distant threat for us in Jordan.
It's a present reality, and this reality requires a different way of working for countries, for the UN, and for all of us.
Over the last three years, the United Nations is facing this reality and facing the very rapidly ticking clock towards 2030, the United Nations and Jordan has started to work differently.
We have started to come together and to reinforce how we collaborate, how we leverage each other's true skill, true competence for something that is greater than the sum of all of our parts.
We are looking also at pivoting or we're trying to pivot out of what I call downstream engagement, the project delivery, the basic service delivery, we're pivoting out of that and into upstream engagement.
How do we test things at the ground level and then help the government to institutionalize them, bring them to scale? How do we help mobilize financing? Jordan financing is a major barrier in terms of accelerating growth at scale because it simply has a more limited budget and a more limited financial space than some other countries in the region.
So our efforts as the United Nations as collective new approach is key to both ensuring that we remain relevant and that we unlock progress, but that we help the government do the same.
So on water and climate specifically, the UN has been supporting Jordan's engagements with the country's nationally determined contribution commitments, also in developing evidence based climate adaptation plans and rainwater harvesting mechanisms and helping to translate all the national commitments into integrated and locally grounded action.
Sustainable change is not something that we deliver though, as the UN.
It's something that we help countries build for themselves.
Today's session reflects all of that collective work that has been carried out under this initiative led by UN habitat, but it is a multi agency UN initiative, looking at the intersection of climate vulnerability, water scarcity, urban pressures and displacement dynamics for us, particularly in the context of the Syria crisis.
It also demonstrates the concrete adaptation measures that address the needs of both displaced people and host communities with particular attention to women and youth.
The initiative is built around several areas of interconnected work.
It helps cities better understand and manage urban risks through climate informed master plans.
It supports practical water solutions, and it takes a regional view, focusing on knowledge sharing and replication.
But what's important here is not what's being tested.
It's what we learn from it.
Again, this is the point of today's session.
What can we learn from this experience? In Jordan, this is particularly important in Airbid and Mafraq where drought, extreme heat, changing rainfall patterns, rapid urban growth, displaced communities have placed serious pressure on already stretched systems.
The practical solutions being tested on the ground have offered an opportunity to learn a different way of doing things.
The climate resilient urban plans and urban observatories, including in Iman, as well as urban and Mafrah are helping the cities generate stronger data for planning and investment and this is key.
So together, all of these efforts show what is technically possible, what communities can sustain, what municipalities can actually manage, and what policies need to change.
This is why the UN is focusing on connecting local action with national policy processes, and Jordan's first national urban policy is built off of this release in 2024.
So in conclusion, let me just offer a few words.
Nations in the Arab State region are under enormous pressure.
There are different pressures across the region.
Unfortunately, for many countries in the region, there's direct conflict or there's spillover from conflict.
These create enormous pressure, but it's important to maintain our commitment and our progress to the other challenges and water in the region is obviously one of those challenges, water, drought, and the ability of cities to be resilient to those pressures.
This session will offer the opportunity to discuss what good practices can jump start practical action.
But our message is clear.
When evidence is taken seriously, when cities are supported and when communities are included, and when partners work together, local action can become lasting change.
So I want to thank you for attending today.
I look forward to a fruitful conversation and to also continuing this outside this room because we know that we don't build urban and resilient urban spaces in a conference room.
We know we have to go back to our normal duty stations or normal locations of work and actually put this into practice.
So thanks.
Thank you, Sherry, for that great start to our conversation.
I completely agree with you that this is a practical discussion, and I left out an important detail in the introduction, which is we're talking about a project that's actually concluding very soon.
So we launched the project.
Alia reminded me of this at the Cowice Wolf in 2022, I believe I was.
And so now this will probably be our last Wolf presentation or panel discussion around this project.
And building on that, I want to encourage our panelists to be as transparent as possible about what you learned because it definitely evolved in ways that we wouldn't have imagined from the start until now.
And there's been great lessons that came out of that.
So on that note, I'd like to welcome our next speaker, Al-Assad.
She's the Urban Program and Partnerships Manager of Habitat Jordan and a development professional with a master's in urban development and planning from the University College London, focused on sustainable and inclusive urban development.
She has more than five years of experience with UN habitat, supporting and coordinating urban projects across local, national and regional levels with an emphasis on urban resilience, participatory planning, and sustainable development.
And I think we can look to Alia to get into more of the details of the work that's being implemented in Jordan.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you so much, Sarah, and I think Sheri, our resident coordinator has really highlighted some of the opportunities and challenges in the Arab states, but also in Jordan in particular in addressing some of our common challenges.
I think our most common challenges across many countries is climate change and we are dealing with the challenges and opportunities that come with that.
Um, and I always look back to the quote of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, um, where he said that cities are where the climate battle will largely be won or lost.
And I think that the statement couldn't be more relevant as it is in Jordan in a lot of cases.
Um, the second most water scarce country in the world, a regional refuge for refugees and displaced populations, but also a country that's facing a big strain on natural resources, on housing, on land, basic services, and climate change adds to this pressure and add to the challenges that the cities are facing.
And in this context, UN habitats work in Jordan and more broadly in the Arab states is guided by the central premise that cities are not only where the challenges are concentrated, but it's actually where the solutions are tested, institutionalized, and scaled.
So a defining feature of this approach is integrating our normative and our operational work on the ground.
This means that policy development is continuously informed by implementation, But also implementation is intentionally designed to support these policies, systems, and regulations and long term planning practices.
Climate change in this case is not approach just as the standalone environmental issue.
It's cross sectoral, it's multidimensional, and it's something that intersects with our resilience, our governance, our infrastructure, poverty, housing, and our resource security.
So in that region where many cities are facing this climate stress with demographic issues and infrastructure challenges, addressing these challenges requires moving beyond these isolated projects and actually institutionalizing our efforts and continuing to scale.
So in Jordan, we've been looking at these urban resilience projects and these climate change projects as really entry points for larger institutional policy transformation.
So over recent years, we have been conducting different city profiling exercises, vulnerability assessments, and spatial analysis to support municipalities in adopting more evidence based planning and to help guide also their investments, urban monitoring systems, and and planning systems.
So this reflects an important shift from reactive planning to more proactive and proactive approaches for climate governance.
So I'm going to give a couple of examples today on how we've been following this approach on the ground, including the lessons learned and the challenges from these examples.
So I'll begin with Aman, the capital city of Jordan that hosts the largest portion of its population.
So our climate resilience story in Arman really began in 2020 when habitats and the Great Arman municipality developed the first comprehensive citywide flood mapping of the city.
This assessment identified more than 120 hotspot locations where green infrastructure should be implemented to support the resilience of the city.
And this became a municipal decision making tool.
The municipality was able to approach their partners, donors to support implementation of green infrastructure within these locations, and it supported their climate adaptation planning as well.
So building on this evidence base, UN Habitat supported the implementation of the El d Green Triangle Pilot Project.
This was the first green infrastructure pilot that was implemented in Arman, I think, even in the country as a whole for flood mitigation.
And it marked this important transition from city scale analysis to actual neighborhood implementation on the ground to create this practical proof of concept that green infrastructure and nature based solutions can have an impact on climate change challenges, specifically flood mitigation in this case.
So then rather than relying solely on great infrastructure approaches and the more traditional approaches, we can integrate stormwater management, nature and public spaces into one, and begin implementing this across the city.
And this triangle was implemented in a normal intersection in Aman.
So it showed how there's already existing spaces that we can begin integrating these approaches and it can be a part of our broader urban fabric in the city.
So, most importantly, based on these lessons learned from the flood risk assessment and the implementation on the ground, we were able to translate the opportunities and the challenges to the Raman Climate Adaptation Plan and also integrate it within the new urban planning by law of the city.
So actually being able to for the first time properly integrate green infrastructure and nature based solution considerations into the first citywide planning by law in the country.
And this represents this shift where green infrastructure doesn't need to be treated as an isolated pilot or just this temporary intervention, but that it can actually be embedded and institutionalizing into the planning context.
And then now today, with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, we are scaling up this approach and implementing in more locations to continue testing out different types of green infrastructure and nature based solutions across the Aman context.
And all of this, the lessons and knowledge generated from this project, will be translated into a evidence based toolkit on the topologies of urban green infrastructure, which will help define a standardized nature based solution approach to integrate it within the different available public spaces in the city.
For example, in staircases and roundabout, intersections, parking lots, and how can we then continue to scale this up and institutionalize it within the Greater Arman municipality daily planning work? So then our objective is clear in this case.
We're moving from one successful pilot towards the replicable and scalable regional models for climate responsive urban development across Jordan, but also to be applied in the Adré region as a whole.
Um, and very importantly, this process strengthened institutional and community engagement in climate resilience.
So we were able to ensure institutional ownership of the Great Armen municipalities because they're just municipalities are not just the implementers of these projects or not just even the recipient of these projects in many cases, but they're actually the custodians.
This is at the end of the day, they own these interventions on the ground and they can translate all of these policies into daily implementation as well.
And also, we approach communities in these cases where they're not just the passive beneficiaries, but they should be active contributors to their climate resilience.
So we recently launched a community award called the Environmental Legacy Makers Award, which provided a platform to incentivize youth, specifically university students across Jordan to be a part of green development and resilience of their cities.
So we're able to tap into their creativity and what we say, they're the learners of today and the leaders of tomorrow.
These are the people who will in the future be implementing these designs, either working in the private sector or in the government or maybe even the UN.
We're trying to envision a future where they care for these climate change challenges and it becomes ingrained within their mindset, and they become more active participants in shaping urban resilience solution.
Um, and then another important example or case study to look at is the Adaptation Fund project, where we were operating in the north of Jordan within the climate refugee nexus in cities where a very large proportion of the citizens or the residents are refugees who suddenly came into the cities and resulted in large pressure on infrastructure and basic services.
We were able to move from piloting water harvesting systems and green solutions towards actually identifying broader structural and policy gaps to water resilience and host communities.
So we are able to conduct evidence based vulnerability assessments and local adaptation plans and rainwater harvesting mechanisms, incentive mechanisms to highlight the urgent need for more coordinated urban response to climate risks in cities hosting large refugee populations.
So one of the important lessons that emerge from this work Sorry.
One of the important lessons that emerge from this work is that while policies related to rainwater harvesting systems already exist, the implementation mechanisms remain very fragmented and insufficiently coordinated across sectors and institutions.
We started looking at our interventions or our pilots really as entry points for broader policy discussions around how Jordan can move towards more structured national approach to rainwater harvesting system, urban resilience, and climate adaptation as well.
So this demonstrates an important principle in N habitats work where pilots are not the end objective, their value actually lies in how they generate evidence and lessons learned, how we can test different implementation models, and how we can strengthen institutional capacity and awareness of the benefits of these models, and then accordingly inform long term policy and regulatory change.
Also, one of the other key lessons learned is that sustainability and scaling can only happen when ownership is there, specifically for the municipality.
This is why pilot projects need to be able to evolve beyond isolated interventions and become embedded within our city systems.
Durable urban transformation can only really happen when city themselves lead the process and are empowered.
But we still have more work to do to institutionalize this.
This is how man habitat is continuing to work across a region.
The future of urban development in the region depends on embedding resilience into our planning systems and moving from reactive responses towards institutionalized and evidence based climate responsive urban development.
And UN habitat and the UN's role as a whole is to support this transformation and work with municipalities, national governments, communities, and development partners to ensure that we have a evidence based, climate responsive approach to city planning.
Thank you.
Thank you, Alia, for these very concrete examples of how you moved in the example of the flood mapping, you did a very specific assessment.
It led to establishing green infrastructure, and then this also influenced the creation of building laws or planning laws in the city.
I think that's really clear and we're also seeing that influence coming across in the Adaptation Fund project now with respect to the rooftop rainwater harvesting.
I understand that a lot of the urban planning exercises that Sherry also mentioned have um, really shifted the way that planning happens in Jordan and the way that that manifests on the ground as well.
Um, I don't know if we had any questions from the audience for our speakers from Jordan before we move because we have great regional representation today.
We also have Lebanon and Syria, so I can also hold for Q&A at the end.
Okay.
Yeah.
Our next speaker is joining us online.
This is Hiba Balbaki, wash program coordinator from UNICEF Lebanon, checking with our tech team in back.
We have I know she's online.
HbA specializes in emergency response stabilization and integrated programming in crisis affected areas with more than ten years of experience working in conflict and crisis.
She supported the design and implementation of wash interventions and longer term stabilization programming addressing the needs of vulnerable communities from across Lebanon.
Okay.
Great.
Can I have access to the slides as well or if you have access because she has this slideshow.
That's connected to the main.
It's the same slides that were already up on the screen, actually, we have to be able to click through while also showing Hiba.
Hi, Hiba.
We're just trying to get your slides up for you.
Hi everyone.
Greetings from Lebanon.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for joining us.
We're going to wait for the presentation? We're trying to get your slides on the screen also.
Maybe in the meanwhile, while they're working on that, we could go to Mona, would you be okay starting and then we can go back to while they get this your presentation is also ready.
Indeed, it's the same problem.
Do we have the PowerPoint up back there? Okay, great.
We can't see on the front screen here.
It's all one sided.
Is there a way that I can flip through or do you flip through from the back? If you can go to the next slide, that should be the start.
Yes.
There we go.
Can you see your slides? Yeah, I cannot see it.
Do you have a copy on your computer? Oh.
Just let us know and we can flip through.
We're on the title slide now.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sarah, for the introduction.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Greetings from Lebanon.
Thank you first for the opportunity to present this initiative implemented by UNICEF, led by UN Habitat, and in coordination, of course, with the UNESCO.
So this project focused not only on implementing climate resilient water solution on the ground, but also on supporting sustainable policy and institutional changes that go beyond the project itself.
Today, I will briefly present key outcomes of the rainwater harvesting, the building codes for one of the municipalities in Lebanon, the regulator committee, and the development of the Water User Association.
Moving to the first slide, which is the rainwater harvesting.
We have more than ten written rainwater harvesting sites.
Can we go to the next slide and back, please.
Apologies.
Go ahead, Heba.
Thank you.
For the first slide, which is the rainwater harvesting, we installed more than ten rainwater harvesting system in public schools in BC supplying water for around 3,000 students while also reducing the dependency on the extensive water trucking service.
These schools as well became spaces for educational activity related to water conservation studies and climate awareness sessions.
An important benefit was during the period of hostilities in Lebanon where this system provided extra water storage for the schools that hosted the internal states people.
Unfortunately, this is the case right now in the country.
Moving to the next slide, which is the building code Reform.
One moment.
We're just trying to sort out how we can click through the slides.
Okay.
No worries.
Did you met? If you want to continue, we're just looking for the clickers to be able to click through through you.
But right now you can see we're looking at the climate solutions, the rainwater harvesting that was installed in the public schools in Lebanon.
Yes.
This led to one of the strongest outcome of this project, which is the building code reform.
Sosa municipality integrated two climate resilient measures that are directly linked into the building code for all future construction permits.
So the first measures or the first measure that has been adopted by the municipality is the mandatory installation of the underground rainwater harvesting reservoir.
For all new buildings.
This helps restore rainwater locally and reduces the pressure on the water supply within the municipality.
And the second measure is follows the sponsity approach that was promoted by UN habitat.
80% requiring at least 80% of non built areas to be permeable, meaning by that water can naturally infiltrate into the soil, and this helps support the groundwater recharge and reduces the flood risk.
And this is particularly important as these measures are no longer voluntary and Sahil is considered one of the first municipalities in Lebanon to formulize climate resilient water standards within building regulations.
So this is the slide for the building code reform, and then we will move to the other component of the projects.
Shall I proceed? Yes.
Go ahead with the reuse code.
So yeah.
Can you see the slide for the use? Yes, we can see the maps.
This is the wastewater reuse slide.
So on the right, there's a yellow line.
This is the area targeted for the use of the wastewater from the treatment plant.
The treatment plant that is shown on the left, so this is the wastewater treatment plant that includes tertiary treatment using UV system, and it's currently treating up to 23,000 cubic meter per day.
So next slide.
You're good.
The next slide is the scheme for the wastewater reuse system.
The treated water from the high treatment plant is pumped from the treatment plant up to 500 cubic meter water storage tank distributed for the irrigation network, and this is supplying up to 12,500 cubic meter per day, covering around 740 hects of farmland for agricultural production.
This scheme shows a clear water reuse approach.
That transforms treated water or treated wastewater into a reliable source for education, especially for vegetable farming, and to note that the system is fully aligned with lib nor standard, ensuring water quality compliance and monitoring through a dedicated regulator committee that I'm going to talk about in the next slide, please.
Please proceed.
Yes.
Because I'm not able to see the slides that's why I'm no problem.
I apologize for the inconvenience.
It's okay.
It's okay.
Technical issues always happen.
The committee of regulator, this committee of regulator ensured that wastewater use system operates efficiently and safely and in line with the national standards.
Of course, it's led by the Ministry of Energy and Water in Lebanon and in our specific case, we have the water establishment in Bica where Z is located, is doing the operation and maintenance for this reuse and treatment plan.
We have as well included other ministries like the Ministry of environment, we have the Ministry of Agriculture, we have the Ministry of Public Health, we have the Ministry of Economy and Trade to monitor a specific component of this use system.
Together, these stakeholders ensure that the wastewater use system, as I said, operates safely and in line with the national standards.
The next slide, which is the last one, Yes.
Go ahead.
Okay.
So the last slide includes the Water User Association.
So this project as well, aimed to help or supported the development of the Water User Association to strengthen the sustainability and the cost recovery mechanism.
So these association are responsible for tariff collection for operation and maintenance responsibility, and for ensuring equitable water distribution among farmers.
Lesson learned from this pilot has contributed to preparation of an upcoming decree that will be endorsed by the Council of Minster.
However, the situation now in Lebanon is not stable, unfortunately.
Once the situation is that stable or back to normal, we will be able to endorse it by the Council of Miminster To wrap up or to conclude, this initiative show how local projects can lead to bigger improvement in policies and institutions.
By combining the actions on the ground with better planning and regulation, the project helped build more climate resilient city and more sustainable water management system.
Thank you and over.
Thank you so much, Heba, for again, very concrete examples of how the work that UNICEF was doing in the field in partnership with habitat and also ESA really resulted in concrete impacts in public schools in planning ministries and that you're seeing this.
It will continue to have an impact for decades to come.
Really, what started from a project is now a lasting change for Lebanon and in despite of really challenging circumstances throughout the entire duration of the implementation of the project.
Bravo, also to you and your team.
Now, we'll be moving to our next speaker from Lebanon.
I'd like to welcome miss Mona Abitar She is the engineer in charge at the Directorate General of Urban Planning in Lebanon.
Mona has more than 25 years of experience with the Director General of Urban Planning, which is under the Ministry of Public Works and Transport.
She has extensive experience in the preparation and development of master plans for Lebanese cities and villages, land use planning, zoning regulations, urban and architectural design guidelines, and the review of development and building projects.
And her work focuses on integrating sustainable and climate responsive planning approaches into urban development with particular attention to housing resilience, environmental integration, and territorial planning.
Welcome.
Thank you, Mona.
I'm N.
Hello everybody.
Thank you for having me here in this wonderful Woof experience.
As Sarah said, my name is Mona Vitar and today I will present the Lebanese experience, especially the work of the DGP in implementing what do you say? Sorry.
I will be presenting the experience of Lebanon, especially the work of the DGOP in integrating climate resilience into urban planning systems in Lebanon.
Unfortunately, the urban planning system is a lot of going under challenges because of the political situation of the country.
We have been facing severe economic instability since 2019 and the challenges is ongoing.
Because of the war during 2024 and also the war now in 2026 and actually, I don't know how the system is really still working under all these challenges.
So actually, the Zahi pilot project, we were working a little bit separated, not like the other organizations, because we have actually fragmented governmental and a weak institutional coordination between each other.
And so what I will show through our discussion how we learned from the Zale pilot very briefly because, as I told you, we were not involved completely in the project.
The project Zale had a decree since 1997 as an urban planning or a master plan for Zale.
So the project was running within this a this pilot project.
I'm saying here, I'm taking it as a case study, not the Zhi industrial area only.
I'm saying the Zaha city.
If you can see in this picture, it is part of the Zahi.
We were at the same time with the municipality of Zaha working to change the master plan that has been done before, like I said, during the 1997, after this period of time, the municipality decided to change the zoning and the regulations.
It was very lucky because SYUN habitat and also UNICEF, they were working on this project.
They benefit from this opportunity and a lot of lessons learned project was implemented in the final master plan that was approved by the higher Council of the Urban Planning in Beirut and a lot of resiliency and sustainable, maybe we say regulations were implemented in the master plan.
Very quickly for the Lebanese situation nowadays, we have, as most of the cities, we have an overlapping challenges and nonstop actually challenges such as rapid urbanization.
We have the pressure of the immigration because of the war.
We have, as I said, economic instability as well as environmental degradation and increasing climate risks.
So, excuse me.
All of these creates major challenges for urban planning and for the local government.
Here, as we can see in this slide, I spoke very quickly about it briefly that we have the challenges of the urban planning policy and how it is impacting the urban planning process through the DGUP and because of this, we have an urgent need for climate mainstreamed urban planning approaches.
Actually, the situation creates an urgent need for integrated urban planning approaches because today, resiliency cannot depend only on emergency response.
It needs to become part of the planning system itself.
This means integrating the environmental protection, the infrastructure planning, how we can use, land use, and the climate adaptation together.
My role or our role at the GGOP is to, We have to play this role.
The DGP now works in translating national strategies into planning tools and master plans.
Basically, we rely on a very important framework, which is the National Physical Master Plan of Lebanon.
Physical master plan acts as a guiding line for urban growth, for infrastructure development, and for the environmental protection.
No here.
But the problem is that this national physical master plan needs to be updated.
It was issued the study or the whole national physical master plan started around 2005 and it is not updated till now.
We have this gap.
But still, we are working under the umbrella of this National physical master plan because it traces the guidelines and what we say the frameworks to lead us to a resilient and sustainable urban planning.
From the Ashley pilot project, it represented an important shift into urban planning philosophy for the EDGUP because it helped us or what we learned from this pilot project is how to shift from traditional urban planning, although we know that the knowledge is there for the new urban planning.
But because the policy is a because the country is facing a lot of challenges, we are not moving forward.
Exactly as the case study made us move toward a more sustainable and resilient urban planning tool that we tried to implement in our urban planning development system.
As I said, the traditional urban planning mainly focused on physical expansion and zoning.
Today, the approach is becoming more climate responsive and risk informed and the objective is not only about urban growth, it became more about how resilient the urban planning development should be.
Planning strategies were developed to work within the natural landscape instead of working against it.
Actually, these are the components of the climate responsive urban planning that were integrated in.
The integration was through developing housing development, environmental integration.
They took into consideration the community and the socio economic analysis, as miss Balbaki said, the nature based solutions, the infrastructure and mobility.
And as I told you, as I said, the transition was moving from conventional planning to more climate responsive planning.
We they worked with the housing resilience was integrated into the urban system.
Here, this slide is the most important one that I should speak about because here are the lessons that we learned from the Za pilot project.
In a planning strategies were developed to work within the natural landscape instead of working against it as I told you.
It focused on the urban growth boundaries.
Usually at the DGOP we don't go through urban growth boundaries.
We work within the physical uh, boundaries.
Like degradation.
We go from the core of the city and we go to the buffers, and this is how we usually master our master plans.
Although politics play a big role in while we are working with the master plans, and here comes the role of the municipalities.
The case in Za is that the municipalities, the municipality of Zach had division and she decided to uh to work within the sustainable framework.
This leads to a very good pilot project that we at the DGU now making it like a model or like a model for the national policy actually.
That when we did the we updated the term of references.
It is the Shi book we updated the book of condition and we put mainly inside it how the main sustainable and urban planning development frameworks that were that the Z pilot was based on in this book.
For example, a doctor book of the condition of Z, as miss Salvai said, we asked people now, they are forced to have the rainwater harvesting.
Whenever anyone want to have a building you want to build, he should before taking the license, he should go for implementing this rainwater harvesting in the project.
He should go for instead of using solid the what do we say, the ground, it should be sustainable material to avoid to go within the sustainable conditions and the resiliency for for the nature based solution.
Here, this is the Berdonia River.
We also shows how there is an integration between the blue and green corridors that the modified master plan exactly was working.
There is an integration between the blue and green corridors into our urban planning systems.
Also, the nature based solutions, as we said.
Again, the main lessons have progressively influenced planning approaches within the DGOP.
The ali experience became a learning platform supporting the transition toward more climate responsive and resilient planning practices in Lebanon.
As I said, DGP start working on the terms of references in our planning studies.
We are updating our planning approaches as well as integrating resiliency and the climate responsive requirements.
As a conclusion, also, I mentioned very briefly about the municipality decision making and I want to add something here that the union of municipalities in Zach that were involved in the Zach pilot project, they were very helpful and they interacted in a way to help in building an observatory, urban and urban observatory because this can help them to achieve this resiliency or sustainable improvement.
As a conclusion This Ache pilot demonstrate how one local project can contribute to a broader national planning reform.
Urban resilience is not only about protecting cities from future risk, from flood, from, I don't know, maybe erosion or environmental and climate related challenges.
It is about designing cities today that are more capable of adapting, surviving, and responding to future challenges.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mona, for the very rich presentation and really illustrating for us how the Soft La municipality, of course, had knowledge of climate resilient planning, but it really took, I guess, right time, right place of this adaptation fund projects with habitat, with UNICEF, together with the municipal officials working together to realize these ideas and put them into practice through the projects and then scale them up and now they're influencing national policy as well.
So that's a really concrete example, and I think it's a direct example of what Jerry was speaking of, of starting at the local level with the project and really using that as a pipeline to bring it up to scale to the national level.
So thank you so much for that great example.
Now, I'm happy that we have such great regional diversity today and I'm happy that Hallet is giving some gender diversity to our panel as well.
Thank you.
I'd like to welcome Had Al Hide, the Director of Plans for the Syrian Ministry of Local Administration and Environment.
He's an architect, urban planning specialist, executive studies consultant.
As well.
He's served in several senior leadership roles with the ministry, including in urban development, planning systems, cadastral affairs, administrative development, and local councils and he's contributed to committees and task forces with international organizations such as Habitat, GI GEICA and FAO.
He's also a lecture at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Damascus.
Welcome, Halen.
Thank you so much.
Salah Maleko, peace be upon you.
Thank you very much for the kind introduction.
I am the head of Urban Planning in the Ministry of Local Governance actually now.
I am really pleased to be here with you.
I've attended Woof 12, and the title was Everything Starts with a House.
And after the libération of Syria, thank God we are in a new reality that is focusing on the most important topics, the most important subjects that impact people's lives.
We along with other ministries in Syria, we work in complementarity to serve The new urban or the sustainable agenda and C.
I will start right away with my presentation now.
Sure.
The key engagement I will be talking about is urban development and we are also supporting the programs of the programs undertaken by the Ministry of local governance jointly with other ministries.
As other speakers said, climate change is not a future problem, but a current problem and we cannot wait and we cannot overlook it.
Syria has a special situation because it's uh, it's located within an area that provides different climates from the coastal regions to the interior regions.
This change provides a lot of qualities and virtues, but also at the same time, challenges like the challenges we have witnessed during the 14 years prior to the libération and also some natural catastrophes like the earthquake in 2023.
Syria And in terms of climate change, we considered climate change to be at the top of our priorities, and we focused on climate change issues.
So we, We put all of our efforts with all the ministries and all the government agencies to address environmental issues and the presence of the president in COP events was a testimony of that.
One of the issues we've been working on jointly with line ministries and relevant institutions is to have a national consultation to draft a national program on climate adaptation as a key step towards a more effective management that would ensure transition from theory to practice and recovery in a sustainable manner.
One of the main challenges, and I think it is known considering climate change, but also there are food related challenges or nutritional challenges.
Because of drought that hits Syria, also the increasing waves of migration and the increased pressure on services and infrastructure because of the rise of population and population needs.
The environmental aspect is not limited to environment, but also social, political and economic aspects.
Water is one of the most important topics.
We have witnessed regression in the number of fish and the natural situation is changing due to lack of precipitation.
There's also an increase in the rates of deforestation and desertification.
That led us to put a number of objectives in the national workshop that was organized in order to create more complementarity between the different essential sectors.
Among those, the importance of more sustainability in food products and a quickening to realize the SDGs.
These are the main sectors that were present at the workshop, agriculture, urban development, management of environmental risks, health care, the healthcare sector.
This was done with the contribution of different authorities such as the local management and ministry and other governmental bodies and no one worked independently from the rest.
The number of projects that were presented during this workshop was 42.
These 42 projects were divided into six sectors.
These six sectors were already presented in the previous slide.
And here in red.
So it was one of the main important projects that were presented within the program of the complementary management of the waters that come from precipitation and also protection of water sources and water resources in general.
This was among the sectors that were studied extensively.
This also came within the framework of protecting water security and moving to more modern ways of irrigation.
Many, many other projects were presented.
I'm not going to a talk about them one by one because the topic of water cannot be dealt with independently.
There's also waste management, the green city, rehabilitation of gardens and parks, green areas in general, the wholesome way of dealing with the waste.
Any topic that has to do with local communities is linked to the whole ecosystem, especially when we are dealing with a sustainable system.
We use the methodology throughout all the projects was dealt with during a workshop with experts who dealt with these four projects.
The evaluation of this project was done through a form that you can see on the screen.
And everything was evaluated according to specific criteria.
It was not done randomly, and it was assessed according to its suitability with the SDGs.
So 20 of those projects were more specific and I'm sorry to hear because I took an example of something that's not immediately related to water.
So we had a grading system here for the project.
Some of them had 80 as score and the last one has 23.
Of course, all of them are important, but the criteria make the grading different.
So we are here today with the technical team and the technical team started to evaluate the projects that got the highest scores according to their priorities.
Which ones among these projects have a strong impact on reality? Which one of them are really urgent? Of course, this comes within the framework of early rehabilitation and sustainability.
We also have a national project that's complete and which includes many some projects classified by priority, and all of them are aiming to help reach the SDGs.
We must not forget that in Syria, there is an important issue related to environment and climate change.
It is the fact that we have an environment observatory.
This observatory doesn't have the necessary means to cover all the area.
It started very recently to follow up on the issues related to water, but it aims to have a complete overview and support to all of the Syrian territory.
This observatory, this environmental observatory is linked to a urban observatory that's still being prepared for this second observatory will do the urban planning with all its components.
Of course, there's also the topic of relocation of the populations that were that were displaced due to conflict, but also to climate change.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank you very much, Holland, for, I think, situating us in time with where Syria is at in terms of urban planning priorities and how to move forward during a major transitional period.
As you mentioned with the observatories, working on the availability of data, which I believe will be really important as you're identifying your next steps and working in partnership with habitat and the other international organizations that you've partnered with before in that effort.
Um, we do have some time for Q&A, I think, before we get to Rada's closing remarks, but one question that I wanted to ask our panelists before opening it up to everyone because I think this is a recurrent theme that's coming out is How do you think we as different UN entities and also as city and national representatives as well, I think that what's the best approach for identifying local partners for project implementation? Is it working first with the national level ministries? Like Mona gave this great example of Safe and also Alia gave the example of Aman coming to the table ready and wanting to work on different topics and just looking for the tools and the resources and some of the know how to be able to do it? I How can we make that happen more often, basically is what I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on that? Sure.
Well, I think that the most important thing is to continue to engage with cities, even if maybe they're not at the point where implementation is ready.
I think that ensuring that there is a continuous awareness of potential solutions on the ground from the region.
It doesn't need to be something that's just implemented in the country itself, but it can be seeing all of these models.
For us, one of the we had a lot of ownership, thankfully, from most of our city partners, whether it was Aman or I or Mafra for the adutation Fund project.
But it was also that we did see an increase in this interest in this engagement after we implemented the first proof of concept on the ground.
Then it started.
There was not just interest, I would say, from uh, from municipality, but other cities were able to see it.
Other development partners, we implemented the hood Green triangle, and then we shared, for example, the study with UNDP, and they implemented another location near it as well, another hotspot location.
So keeping that kind of dialogue going with the different development partners, the municipalities, the national government, but always I would say having the the evidence on the ground, whether it's a vulnerability assessment that's generating evidence or an urban observatory, or if it's the actual implementation that showed the potential success and lesson learned, I think that that always encourages further cooperation and coordination between different partners and different types of partners, but also across the different levels of government as well.
I want to say something that the National Physical Master Plan in Lebanon talked very clearly about the role of municipalities and how they should be decentralized.
This is a point where we can start.
In the case of, you know, municipalities start to mitigate each other, a little bit jealous from each other.
But yes, this is a good point because they want to be I want to be the best one.
And this is making a good, impact, because they are trying to go through the big title of sustainability, although they don't have the awareness or they don't have the knowledge or they don't know deep inside that when they will start going through sustainability, maybe they have to change the building coefficients of the agricultural land.
Now, some municipalities have high building coefficients.
Exactly what happened, the municipality decided to make it lower.
Because you want to preserve the green land.
But answering your questions, they should all work together.
There should be an integration in urban planning, if I'm talking about urban planning.
DGOP plays a very big role, but we cannot go for implementing if we don't have the policy that should be changed.
Thank you.
Those are both and great examples and I brought to mind the work that we did also under the same project.
It almost became a mini project in and of itself, a climate finance for municipalities program that we developed.
This basically started, we did one webinar that was focused on how cities can access climate finance, particularly for water related projects.
There was such interest in that that eventually we turned it into a full capacity building program and there was a competitive process for municipalities from Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, to take part in it.
We ended up receiving more than 100 entries from municipalities and we accepted, I think it was 13 or 14 in the end.
They work together, to your point, Mona.
You were also involved in this process too, and providing backup support.
So yeah, they were both competing against one another, also building each other up and helping one another develop their ideas, and it ended up being one of the really nice outcomes of the projects that we hadn't anticipated at the start.
And On that note, I wanted to turn to the audience to see if we had one or two questions before we go to closing.
I saw this hand go up first.
Do we have one, two, and three.
Thank you so much.
Thanks.
Gosh, this is loud.
António Sampao, I'm an independent researcher consultant working with the UN climate security mechanism, also a PhD student at King's College London.
Perhaps an odd question to be the first.
It's a little bit off topic, but I wanted to learn, especially from the participants from Lebanon and Syria, whether issues of peace building, community cohesion, reintegration, are elements in the climate planning and the urban planning that you are doing and the service provision in terms of fairness or the way that it brings community together, breaking down barriers between ethnic, social, sectarian groups, if the climate security nexus has been on your radar more broadly as well.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think maybe we'll just take all three questions and then the second question there.
Thank you so much.
My name is Mohammed Abai.
I'm the structuring advisor and global leader on subnational Finance with the United Nations Capital Development Fund.
It was striking to me at the opening remarks, Shari mentioned the fact that the countries being presented today are also facing financial constraints.
However, none of you have talked about this program, how the work is connected to finance.
We need to move towards sustainable financing mechanisms that are linked to the planning process.
These are countries not just constrained financially, but dwindling actually in terms of their financial outlook.
Syria, for example, just emerged from a war that really deteriorated to a large extent, but even now, the donor resources are not flowing.
There are different types of challenges here when you look at it.
Jordan has a lot of pressure.
Fiscal space is going down.
They can't borrow anymore and so on.
Lebanon is the same situation.
Plans are good, but not also interlinked with practical financial sustainable mechanisms that can unlock finance at scale and how they can crowd in blended finance or private sector finance.
I think that becomes a problem.
So maybe it'd be good to see how you guys have managed to also link that in the work or at least what plans to come ahead.
Thank you.
Sure.
Thank you.
And we'll take one last question here and then get started with our responses.
Thank you.
My name is Jed Kyute.
I'm from Jordan doing my PhD in Technical University of Damstad Germany.
My research focus mainly on social aspects.
My question is regarding the two studies from Jordan and Lebanon, to what extent local knowledge and community experience were considered in these resilience interventions from the let's see planning and implementation.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I'm going to ask the panelists to keep it very brief so we have time for Rada's closing.
But would anyone like to speak to the climate peace and security component and how this factors into your planning decisions and design? I think this part wasn't my we as DGOP we were not responsible about the environmental part of we worked more with, you know, Tony Habits the Office of Habitable.
We worked more with urban planning as an urban planning as a zoning regulations.
So I don't have the perfect the correct answer or what is answered Sure.
Maybe you can because you were following more than me in the I'm praying.
Well, I will say one of the components of the project is that we're addressing water scarcity challenges in communities that are hosting displaced persons.
This is aimed, particularly in Lebanon, but also in other countries in the region when you have a lot of displacement and it's putting strain on resources and particularly in the context of Lebanon, getting back to the finance point where you're having a major financial crisis, you experience tensions within communities.
This project was really um, aimed at getting to the heart of those tensions around water and how can you make it available both to the host and to the displaced to try and ease that burden? Any additions Done.
For sure.
Yes, in Syria, we take into account the local populations when we deal with any services, no exceptions.
Of course, we take into account the environment through local communities and throughout all the sectors.
Even after the creation of the new government, we weren't able to reach some areas and we took into account the special geography and the environment of Syria.
Of course, when we talk about the environment, there are no national borders.
Sometimes we have resources such as underground waters, and you cannot control its beginning and its end.
You cannot control the whole of it.
Or for example, if you have a river, it flows through your country but also through other places.
So We tried anyway, to make sure the conditions are there through committees and groups to create projects in order to take care and support those communities.
Today we have projects that are given to local communities in order to protect the environment and to guarantee social development in spite of that situation.
Think that the finance question is important.
So why don't we give 30 seconds to it and then we'll go to.
Did you want to I can say, in terms of finance, while we weren't looking so much at the national level, I did mention that we developed this climate finance for municipality program that was focused on helping cities to be able to develop project pipelines that would be viable for receiving finance.
Part of the challenge is that they're developing small scale projects, $1 million projects that aren't appealing to funders, and that is the challenge that we need to figure out how to group them and get them to develop something that's more appetizing to financing entities.
Okay, Oh, No.
I would say also regarding the financing mechanisms, it's a very important point and it's an ongoing challenge that we have been trying to support through several different initiatives.
But in terms of also the planning guidelines and the assessments, they're very important for actually guiding the investment so that when there are funds in the municipal budget or from outside donors or investors or even a um, um, or even any loans to the country or to the city specifically, that they have in front of them a prioritized investment framework that's built on evidence and on community needs.
So, um, they act in a way to guide the investment.
And one of the things that we're trying to promote is actually implementing these kinds of climate resilience projects within the municipal budget.
So in a case where the municipality is rehabilitating a street, which they would have to do anyway using the municipal budget, they follow specific guidelines or specific, uh, priorities to implement these climate resilience measures in a very cost effective way, which is why we are trying to test out through our projects these different typologies.
Also, should I go into the knowledge part just quickly or I think we actually need to wrap because I promised we'd done on time and we're not Rana, do you want to go ahead and give us a minute or two closing apologies.
Rada Al Saed is the regional program coordinator for Habitat Jordan for the Resilient Water Solutions Project.
Thank you, Sarah.
Maja.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I will be mindful of the time and I believe my co speakers here, I'm sorry, they have mentioned it all.
We are here in a session that talks about building water resilient cities and we have to think of a, a mutual collaboration between everybody between different UN agencies and between the national governments and the local communities in the countries we are targeting.
When we bring this collective knowledge and experiences together, we target the local context.
We know each country's priorities and we fit in that priority.
We bring collective experiences, UN habitat.
A UN habitat, we think cities, we think urban, and we think climate change, resilient cities.
And when we talk UNICEF, we've got implementation on the ground for so many projects and interventions that my colleague, Sarah, talked about in the uh resilient PA solutions against climate change.
When we talk es in that particular project, we talk about sharing the knowledge, and this is very important because one city or one country knowledge may be replicated in others in different ways and may be customized, but we get the knowledge from one city.
Sorry, Rada, they're asking us to close.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you so much to our panelists.
I'm sorry we got squeezed for time, but please come up and chat with us.
We're here and happy to speak.
Thank you.