National Water Sector Strategy 2010 - 2020.

To ensure water supply, irrigation and sanitation services over all the Lebanese territory on continuous basis and at optimal services levels, with a commitment to environmental, economic and social sustainability, the Government of Lebanon adopted this National Water Sector Strategy (NWSS) to be implemented in a ten-year period within 2020. Given that, as for the Vision, water is considered a right for every citizen and a resource for the whole country, the strategy aims at achieving its goal by a series of strategic objectives on both infrastructure and management level. Regarding the infrastructural level, interventions concern: (i) production; (ii) transmission and distribution for both water supply and irrigation, and (iii) wastewater. While, at managerial level, the Strategy deals with different fields, namely: (i) Institutional and Organizational; (ii) Financial and Commercial; (iii) Legal and Regulatory; (iv) Environmental Concerns; and (v) Awareness and Conservation.
The Strategy main 5 targets are: 1) improved and sustainable water supply capable of forecasting required resources to cover anticipated shortages by: (i) developing infrastructure to ensure continuous access to high-quality service through increased coverage, reduced unaccounted-for water and optimized network management; (ii) transforming the Water Establishments into autonomous and accountable utilities; (iii) moving the WEs towards financial sustainability by applying new tariff structures, divided in three sectors, water supply, irrigation and wastewater, that replaces the flat tariff structure by a volumetric tariff structure; and (iv) increasing the role of private capital and management by developing an enabling environment for PPP; 2) sustainable water resources management and allocation to priority uses (essentially irrigation) by: (i) improving the quality of surface water resources; (ii) improving the protection of groundwater; and (iii) prioritizing surface water storage wherever possible; 3) development of wastewater sector by: (i) developing infrastructure and management to increase coverage of collection networks and treatment capacities; 4) encouragement of a sustainable irrigated agriculture by: (i) improving irrigation infrastructure and management; (ii) expanding the cover of irrigated soils; 5) strengthened controls and reform implementation by: (i) by restructuring and equipping the concerned Ministry and by building human capacity in the sector through staff development and training. The main priority for the implementation is to improve the efficiency of public investment through an integrated national investment program.
To make agriculture more productive and sustainable, the NWSS proposes: (i) reuse of treated wastewater; (ii) Adoption of high efficiency on-farm irrigation techniques, e.g., drip irrigation, sprinkler irrigation, overhead irrigation where applicable; (iii) coordination with Ministry of Agriculture for the adoption of lower consumption crops; (iv) public outreach, awareness and farmer education programs; and (v) farm audits and optimization according to local conditions.
In order to increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, the Strategy focuses on preparedness and aims at improving and refining the knowledge on climate change and its implications on water resources and its vulnerability by: (i) collect, analyze and develop trends for climatic data; (ii) establish a unified database to include all water monitoring data and maintain it regularly updated; (iii) develop and implement long term river, spring and snow cover monitoring programs; (iv) update periodically water usage scenarios and thus water management options.