The 2006 war and its inter-temporal economic impact on agriculture in Lebanon |
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| Authors: | Ragy Darwish Nadim Farajalla Rania Masri |
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| Institution: | Resources and Environmental Economist and the General Director of the Association for Human and Economic Abilities Development (AHEAD), Lebanon;;Associate Professor of Environmental Hydrology at the Department of Landscape Design and Ecosystems Management, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut, Lebanon;;Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics at the Institute of the Environment, University of Balamand, Lebanon. |
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| Abstract: | The July 2006 war waged by Israel on Lebanon caused an estimated USD 1 billion of direct (financial) damage to infrastructure. However, it generated also significant indirect (economic/inter-temporal) costs. One sector that suffered considerably in this respect was agriculture, the main source of income for 30–40 per cent of Lebanese. This paper's main objective is to develop a methodology to estimate the total—direct and indirect—cost of the war to agricultural crop production, using an area of south Lebanon as a focal point. The indirect loss assessment viewed inter-temporal reductions in crop production values as the opportunity cost of not working fields due to the presence of unexploded ordnance (UXO). Various crops were evaluated for two scenarios (50 and 100 per cent damage due to UXO) over UXO-clearance periods of five and 10 years. The results indicate that any damage estimates that include only direct losses will under-estimate total losses by 80 and 87 per cent for the five- and 10-year periods, respectively. |
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| Keywords: | agricultural production inter-temporal costs Lebanon unexploded ordnance (UXO) war damage |
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