Lebanese Environment & Development Observatory (LEDO)

The Lebanese Environment and Development Observatory (LEDO) is one of a group of Observatories launched along the Mediterranean countries by an initiative of the Blue Plan office. The LEDO like several others is funded by the European Commission Life-Third Countries programme executed by the Ministry of Environment under the management supervision of UNDP.

The scope of the Lebanese Environment and Development Observatory (LEDO) activities can vary from simple collection and publication of existing environmental information to gathering, collection, analysis, and publication of well-defined environment and environment-related development data and indicators. Although environment and development data are gradually becoming more available in Lebanon today, significant information gaps continue to exist in key environment (e.g., air and water pollution levels, industrial wastewater discharges) and development areas (e.g., costs of environmental degradation).

Therefore, in order to maximize its benefits and added value, the LEDO must act, first, as a catalyst for collection of much-needed data. This means that the LEDO will need to work with other ministries, agencies, and academic institutions to agree on a limited number of environment and development indicators, find out who's collecting what type of information necessary to estimate those indicators, and agree on who will collect the missing information to evaluate all selected indicators.