Environment Minister Michel Musa has one of the world’s most thankless jobs, having at his disposal ­ according to his own count ­ just 46 employees and $1.7 million ranged against a veritable armada of forces that threaten to engulf this entire country in garbage, untreated sewage, toxic chemicals, and uncontrolled quarrying. Whether or not his figures are completely accurate, Musa needs more help than he has been getting, and the state is obviously too destitute to be of much use in this regard. Nonetheless, the situation is not entirely hopeless if the private sector can see its way to recognizing its own interests by pitching in with funding and other forms of assistance that in the long run will serve both its own ends and those of the country at large.

The formula is simple: Lebanon’s economy is increasingly based on services, one of the key sectors being tourism. But that will not be the case for much longer if people who come here to visit find a filthy Third World backwater stewing in a cesspool instead of a picturesque developing nation trying its best to make them happy. Therefore, businesses that rely on a steady influx of visitors from abroad have a lot to lose if the country continues to be soiled by stinking sewage, foul air, and gaping holes that make unsightly nightmares out of mountainsides that might otherwise grace postcards.

The private sector might join the government in pleading poverty, but not if it wants to survive. Once the tourists stop coming, the economic pressures being felt today will seem like a golden era of prosperity by comparison. And stop coming they will if their vacation dollars, euros and rials continue to be rewarded with environmental degradation.

As for those who believe their businesses have nothing to do with the state of the tourism sector, they need to think again. Hotels and restaurants are not the only enterprises that depend on a healthy share of the regional tourism market: Directly or indirectly, every visitor who comes here helps to support innumerable other industries as well. From produce wholesalers and soft-drink bottlers to small neighborhood sandwich and gift shops, every private business in the country benefits when more people are out and about having a good time. This is not to mention the tax income generated by the tourist industry, without which the Treasury would be even more badly depleted and therefore forced to adopt even tighter austerity measures.

For the private sector, helping to clean up the environment should not be looked at as unnecessary spending or even purely as community support. Instead it should be seen for what it is: an investment in the future designed to protect a national birthright by ensuring that each and every visitor goes away with fond memories of sun, sand and sea rather than bitter regrets about having dropped a pile of money on a place that lacks the common sense to keep itself clean. Lebanese businesspeople have been in some tight spots before and always managed to survive, but this is not a war that will end or a storm that will go away. It is a mounting crisis of epic proportions that threatens to destroy their livelihoods unless they act with foresight.

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