Introduction
7
injuries. Such violent conflicts also damage the environment in ways that are often expensive to restore, if not irreversible. Chapter 6 provides a comprehensive valuation of the environmental damages caused by the 34-day conflict in Lebanon in July and August 2006. The hostilities killed almost 1,200 people, injured more than 4,400, and severely damaged the country’s infrastructure. Moreover, the bombing of a power plant in Jiyeh caused the spill of about 12,000 to 15,000 tons of oil into the Mediterranean Sea. The conflict left enormous amounts of demolition and military waste, including debris, rubble, and unexploded ordnances (UXOs). This chapter estimates the cost of environmental damage associated with the oil spill and waste at 2.4 percent of GDP in 2006. The impacts of demolition and military waste account for 1.4 percent of GDP, primarily because of the high costs of disposing of demolition waste, of casualties, and of agricultural losses caused by UXOs in South Lebanon. The damage due to the oil spill represents 1 percent of GDP, mainly because of the high costs of cleaning up the oiled waste, the cost of oil burned and spilled, and the income losses from coastal services (for example, hotels and restaurants). The COED work conducted in the Middle East and North Africa has had significant impact on the ground. It has not only raised the countries’ awareness about the magnitude of the existing environmental damage, but also become the driving force behind concrete actions to incorporate the COED into the investment and policy-making processes. Chapter 7 summarizes the COED’s main impacts in the Middle East and North Africa in terms of strengthening the policy dialogue, capacity building, institutions, and environmental investments. The estimates of damage to each environmental category and natural resource in selected Middle Eastern and North African countries are part of a wider effort of valuing the full COED in these countries. Figure 1.1 summarizes the main results for selected countries in the region, including each country case study in this book. Although the estimates are not directly comparable,7 figure 1.1 shows that the COED ranges from as little as 2.1 percent to as much as 7.4 percent of GDP for different countries and years. Once again, these costs are order-of-magnitude estimates and should be interpreted as such. The COED is now a product increasingly demanded by the countries’ governments and a flagship of the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Region. At the methodological level, this book provides the best case studies from select Middle Eastern and North African countries as