American University of Beirut
Beirut 1107 2020
Lebanon
- Environment/Sustainable development
The Environment Academy (EA) is formed of a director and four staff members. It is an integral part of the Nature Conservation Center at the American University of Beirut and has access to all the resources at the University. EA’s budget is around USD 200,000/year. Funds are secured from private donations and grants. Each 2 years, EA launches a new cycle to address local environmental threats, enhance the representation and involvement of women, and foster community and women leadership in driving change through a five-phase approach: 1) initiating an open call for community participation and selection, 2) engaging in transdisciplinary science and data collection, 3) collaboratively creating and funding solutions, 4) implementing projects, and 5) ensuring the project's sustained impact. The culmination of the EA cycle brings together a group of stakeholders, including experts, community members, local officials, and activists, united to find environmental solutions for the people at risk.
Mission: We are a community born and expert supported movement dealing with urgent environmental breakdown. We empower vulnerable local communities to become agents of transformation and stewards of their own just, healthy, and sustainable future.
Our Objectives are:
1. Extend the learning beyond the walls of the university
2. Address evidence based solutions to environmental breakdowns
3. Engage and empower community agents of change for a just and sustainable future
The Environment Academy (EA) is a grassroots movement addressing urgent environmental challenges by empowering local communities on the front lines of environmental degradation to co-create solutions. By fostering deep collaboration and leveraging accountability mechanisms, we are challenging traditional power dynamics in decision-making processes, reimagining the role of science and knowledge, and promoting effective collaboration among diverse stakeholders – including state actors, private enterprises, civil society organizations, and community members – to achieve socio-ecological transformation. In the midst of Lebanon's unprecedented social, political, and economic crisis, establishing long-term mechanisms to ensure clean air, water, and soil is imperative.
The EA methodology has demonstrated success in 10 communities nationwide. In EA Cycle 1, notable achievements include engaging over 100 community members in 1.5 years of transformative action guided by multidisciplinary science, forging 22 municipal partnerships to enhance community representation in local governance, facilitating knowledge exchange through 270 sessions with 35 experts from around the world over 2 years, proposing 4 evidence-based solutions for safe water supply to authorities, deploying 150 locally built composters in households, closing and cleaning 2 open solid waste dumps along the Beirut River, planting 200 native wild fruit trees with harvest returns benefiting communities, and developing 2 community green spaces.
Currently, EA is collaborating with 12 additional communities in EA Cycle 2. The process begins with community members forming gender-balanced local teams to address environmental threats. After obtaining approval from local authorities, these teams submit applications for evaluation. A panel of around 30 local and diaspora Lebanese environmental experts review the applications, selecting approximately 10 teams to join EA in each cycle. Each team is paired with at least one expert mentor and one intern committed to collaborating intensively for at least one year. The EA process unfolds in five phases: trust-building through open discussions and site visits, evidence gathering, crowdfunding, collective implementation of solutions, and establishing structures for sustained management and growth.
The 12 projects across 11 villages include addressing various community-identified themes such as solid waste management, forest fire prevention, renewable energy systems, water resource management, green space creation, ecosystem preservation, plastic debris cleanup in rivers, and wastewater system design.
Our country has been marked by polarized conversations and deep divisions for decades. The environmental breakdowns that we have witnessed recently, stand out as a unifying force that transcends all man-made barriers. At the core of these challenges lies the very essence of life itself – clean air, water, and soil are essential for the well-being of all living beings, irrespective of religion, political affiliation, or geographical location. The projects undertaken by EA exemplify this unity by spanning across religious and political divides, as well as geographical regions.
By focusing on science and community engagement as the main pillars of its initiatives, EA emphasizes the importance of evidence-based solutions for the benefit of society as a whole. This approach resonates deeply with the mission and goals of ALF, which are committed to building more inclusive, empathetic and resilient societies, to fight growing mistrust and polarization
Through its collaborative efforts, EA not only addresses pressing environmental issues but also fosters dialogue and cooperation among diverse communities and stakeholders.
While rooted in local needs and knowledge, the values and guidelines established by EA possess a global applicability that extends beyond Lebanon. We firmly believe in the imperative of disseminating our learned lessons to other communities and activists worldwide, while also remaining receptive to exchanging ideas, cautionary tales, and insights from diverse locales.
This exchange is founded on our core values, emphasizing the significance of contextual understanding, participatory design of solutions, holistic transdisciplinary approaches, fostering trust and presence, and documentation and sharing for scalability and comparability. These principles serve as guiding lights, ensuring that our methodologies are adaptable and effective in addressing environmental challenges across various fragile situations worldwide.