During Publish What You Pay's Global Assembly (#PWYPGA19) which took place in Dakar, LOGI's Executive Director gave a #TransparencyTalk about LOGI's experience and efforts in mitigating environmental impacts. Watch the full talk here: https://youtu.be/eJOLo1ZIMY8

Read below to learn more about what LOGI has been doing under its environmental pillar. LOGI’s efforts to secure a safe and sustainable environment by decreasing social, economical and environmental impacts started in 2017. Back then LOGI -in collaboration with Publish What You Pay and in partnership with Freidrich Eibert Stiftung-Lebanon (FES) - urged the government to update the existing Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for the exploration activities in the oil and gas sector in Lebanon. (You can read LOGI’s report about SEA’s and Lebanon’s SEA in the links below) LOGI also called for public consultation to occur during the updating process. We persisted with our efforts that eventually led to a decision from the Lebanese Petroleum Administration (LPA) to renew the existent SEA (Link to that is found below). To support the efforts being put during the SEA updating, LOGI in partnership with FES organized a series of workshops in different regions in Lebanon (namely: Kesserwan, Batroun, Tyre, Sarafand, Beirut). The main objectives of the workshops were: [1] To inform the public about the impacts of exploration [2] To shed light on the updating of the SEA [3] To capture the concerns and fears of the people in the regions about the exploration activities. Those concerns were then shared with the Lebanese Petroleum Administration to make sure that they are taken into consideration during the process of updating the SEA. Furthermore, our mission doesn’t end here. Now that the LPA has published the revamped SEA (Link found below) and called for public consultation for a period of 1 month, LOGI is organizing 2 meetings with experts and civil society organization to review the SEA to ensure it is up to par. These meetings are to be done with an environmental consultancy firm, GeoFlint and aim to provide feedback and ensure civil society participation in the process.

Important links:

1. LOGI's 2017 environment report: https://logi-lebanon.org/KeyIssue/rev...

2. Publish 2012 SEA on the LPA's website: http://www.lpa.gov.lb/sea.php

3. Published revamped draft SEA: http://www.lpa.gov.lb/SEA_comments.php