Water in Lebanon

Lebanon is the paradox: the Levant's wettest country, with snow-capped ranges, coasts above 700 mm and year-round rivers, and taps that fail daily. The constraint is institutional: a bankrupt state, utilities that collect a fraction of costs, and electricity too scarce to pump. It has been compounded since 2019 by financial collapse and by hosting the world's highest per-capita refugee population. Nature delivers the water. Governance loses it.

The financial collapse turned a management problem into a survival one. With the grid delivering a few hours of power a day, pumping stations and treatment works run on diesel the utilities cannot afford. UNICEF warned as early as 2021 that the public water system was "on the verge of collapse", with most of the population at risk of losing access, and the system has been kept alive since largely by donor-funded fuel, spares and emergency works.⁶

A quick-reference dashboard for Lebanon: headline economy and water indicators²⁹³⁰, water stress against the scarcity thresholds, non-conventional supply, and the institutions behind the sector. The commercial picture, with buyers, deal structures and the project pipeline, is in the market brief.

One interactive map of Lebanon's water, built from real geodata. Climate & drought maps the aridity gradient (WorldClim) with warming projections. The WRI Aqueduct layers, covering overall water risk, water stress and flood risk (plus groundwater decline where the trend is significant), shade every river sub-basin by its 0–5 risk score. Demand shows where the population, and the water demand, concentrate. Infrastructure brings the physical system together: rivers, dams (FAO AQUASTAT), treatment plants, desalination and the major conveyors. Hover any sub-basin or marker for detail; sources are cited under each view.

Lebanon is small and mountainous. It covers 10,400 km², about 60 km wide and 225 km along the Mediterranean.¹ Four bands run north to south. A narrow coastal strip lies below the Mount Lebanon range, which peaks at 3,087 m at Qurnat as Sawda.¹ Behind it lies the Bekaa Valley at about 900 m, and the Anti-Lebanon range rises to 2,800 m along the Syrian border.¹ About 70% of the land is carbonate rock.¹ Coastal rivers have small catchments of about 200 km² and courses under 50 km. Their flow has fallen drastically over the last three decades.¹

Rainfall and snow

Average rainfall is estimated at 823 mm.¹ It ranges from 700–1,000 mm on the coast and 1,500–2,000 mm in the high mountains to 400 mm in the east and under 200 mm in the north-east.¹ Above 2,000 m it falls mostly as snow, which sustains about 2,000 springs through the dry season.¹ Most rain and snow fall between November and March, peaking in January at 160–180 mm a month.² There are 60–80 rainy days a year, and more than 30 snowy days at altitude. April to October is dry.² Years swing widely. Rainfall was under 500 mm in 1960–61, 2001, 2010 and 2019, and about 900 mm in 1968–70, 1994 and 2004.²

Temperature and trends

The coast averages 20 °C a year, from 13 °C in winter to 27 °C in summer. The Bekaa averages 16 °C, and the high mountains less than 10 °C.¹ Summer highs reach 30–40 °C in July and August.² Annual mean temperature rose by 1.6 °C over 1950–2020, faster after 1991.² Natural disasters have become more frequent since 2010. There were three times as many floods in 2015, and heatwaves grew more intense in 2020.²

Projections

Regional models project warming of 1.6–2.2 °C by mid-century and 2.2–4.9 °C by the end of the century, against 1986–2005.² CMIP6 models point to 10% less rainfall by mid-century and 16% less by 2100.² Compound heatwave and drought events could become almost five times more common in 2041–2060.² Winter floods could rise by up to 30%, while river flows fall.² Mediterranean sea level is likely to be 37–90 cm higher around 2100 than at the end of the 20th century.²

Rainfall and temperature in numbers

Averaged over the whole of Lebanon, ERA5 reanalysis gives about 571 mm of rain a year and a mean temperature of 15.5 °C for 1991–2020. About 54% of that rain falls in December, January and February, and 3 months average less than 5 mm. Since 1971 the country has warmed by about 0.48 °C a decade. Average rainfall in 1993–2022 was about 7% lower than in 1951–1980, and single years swing widely around that.

Projected change

Source: World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, retrieved September 2026. ERA5 0.25° reanalysis for the annual series (1950–2022) and the monthly climatology (1991–2020); CMIP6 0.25° multi-model ensemble median for the projections, as change against 1995–2014. These are national averages, which hide the gap between wet highlands and dry interiors, and reanalysis rainfall over deserts carries wide uncertainty.

Nature delivers more water than Lebanon manages to use well. FAO counts eight major aquifers with an estimated volume of 1,360 million m³.¹ Springs fed by mountain snow carry much of the dry-season flow.¹ Pressure is rising. An estimated 2.45 million people face extreme water stress, up from 2.1 million before the Syrian crisis, and 3.2 million face high stress.² The Litani, the national river, is also the most polluted, as the water quality section sets out.

The main rivers

The table ranks the rivers of Lebanon by the largest natural flow they reach inside the country. Natural flow is the modelled long-term average before any withdrawals. For a heavily used river it measures what the river could carry, not what arrives today.

Sources: Grill, Lehner, Thieme et al. (2019), Mapping the world’s free-flowing rivers, Nature 569, dataset under CC BY 4.0, for length, natural flow (WaterGAP, 1971–2000) and free-flowing status, meaning the share of the river’s length inside Lebanon still classed as free-flowing. No flow figure is given below 20 m³/s, where a global model is too coarse to rank small rivers. Dams from the FAO AQUASTAT regional inventories, matched to the nearest river reach, so a dam on a tributary close to a main stem can be counted against the main stem. The same rivers are drawn on the water map above under Rivers & lakes.

Lebanon diverts and pumps about 1.6 BCM a year, against a theoretical availability of 2.7 BCM, the World Bank estimated in 2012. Demand could approach 2.0 BCM by 2020 and 2.7 BCM by 2030.⁸ Groundwater carries the imbalance, with abstraction of 0.7 BCM a year against recharge of 0.5 BCM. Well permits were not enforced, and a large number of wells were reported as illegal.⁸ Storage equals only 6% of total resources, against a regional average of 85%.⁸

Irrigation

Irrigation takes more than 60% of all diversions. About 90,000 ha are equipped, two-thirds of them in public schemes. Open canals and flood irrigation still cover more than 70% of that area, while sprinklers serve 21,000 ha and micro-irrigation 13,000 ha. In 2012 more than half of the schemes lacked adequate operation and maintenance.⁸

The Litani is the backbone. The Qaraoun Dam, built in 1959, stores 220 million m³, of which 160 million serves irrigation and hydropower at Awali, Joun and Markaba. It irrigates about 36,000 ha in the south and 1,400 ha in the Beqaa, roughly 30% of the country’s irrigated land.⁹ Irrigated farming in the Beqaa itself covered about 54,000 ha in 2010.⁹ Volumes on the shared rivers are small. Lebanon abstracts about 7 MCM a year from the Hasbani, 4.2 MCM of it for irrigation, and about 21 MCM from the Orontes.¹⁴¹⁵

Supply in the towns is intermittent. In 2012 the network reached 79% of the population and 48% of water went unaccounted for. The capital area received as little as three hours a day in summer.⁸

Withdrawals over time

FAO’s AQUASTAT estimates put Lebanon’s freshwater withdrawals at 751 million m³ in 1975 and 1,812 million m³ in 2022. Agriculture’s share of the total moved from 80% in 1979 to 38% in 2022.

Source: FAO AQUASTAT via the World Bank World Development Indicators, retrieved September 2026. AQUASTAT revises national figures irregularly and fills the years between surveys, so a jump between two adjacent years usually marks a new national estimate rather than a change on the ground.

The Qaraoun Reservoir on the upper Litani is the main store of water. It holds about 220 million m³, of which 160 million m³ is effective storage.¹ It feeds three hydroelectric plants that meet about 7–10% of power needs.¹ The Shabrouh dam near Faraya, inaugurated in 2007, adds 8 million m³ for Kesrouan and parts of Metn.¹ The Lebanese Strategy for Surface Water Storage proposed US$3 billion of new storage.⁸

Water for Beirut

Under a 1970 presidential decree, Lake Qaraoun supplies 3 m³/s of drinking water to Greater Beirut from April to October.⁵ In December 2010 the World Bank approved US$200 million for the Greater Beirut Water Supply Project.⁵ It was designed to add 250,000 m³ a day and, for the first time, to bring surface water to Beirut from the Awali River.⁵ The Wardanieh treatment plant was 78% built by October 2024 but unfinished when the project closed, because of the regional conflict.⁵ A follow-on project aims to raise dry-season demand coverage in the served zones from 24% to more than 70%.⁵

Wastewater

Lebanon generates about 310 million m³ of wastewater a year, FAO estimated, but treated only 4 million m³ in 2006.¹ In 2012 only two of twelve large coastal treatment plants were operating. Four major plants, at Tripoli, Chekka, Batroun and Nabi Younes, stood idle for lack of collection networks.⁸ In 2019, 53% of wastewater was discharged untreated to rivers, lakes or the sea, and 19% received primary or secondary treatment.² By July 2024 only 8 of 13 treatment plants were working, mostly with donor support.⁵ Power cuts have repeatedly shut plants and sent raw sewage into rivers.² Desalinated seawater was estimated at 47.3 million m³ in 2006.¹

Networks and losses

Pipes reach most homes, but water often does not. In 2012 network coverage was 79% and unaccounted-for water averaged 48%. In summer the capital area received water for as little as three hours a day.⁸ The 2024–2035 national water strategy puts non-revenue water at a national average of about 50%. That excludes water billed but never paid for; counting it, the figure rises to around 65%.³ The Beirut and Mount Lebanon establishment estimates its own non-revenue water at around 40%, mostly commercial losses from unregistered users and misclassified accounts. It has no customer-level metering, so the figure is uncertain.⁵ The strategy aims to cut non-revenue water by 25 percentage points by 2035, and to meter 15% of domestic connections by 2029 and 40% by 2035.³ The second Beirut project will install at least 40,000 household smart meters.⁵

The asset base in numbers

Sources: FAO AQUASTAT regional dam inventories (CC BY 4.0), which list large dams with a published capacity and can lag recent construction; the MENA Water Review major projects register, where each record cites its source on the project page. The database follows large contracted projects, not the whole asset base.

The Litani is Lebanon’s most important river and its most polluted. In 2010 the Beqaa sent 45 million m³ of municipal wastewater a year into it, most of it untreated. Industry added about 4 million m³. Of the 294 industrial sites in the upper basin, 120 stood within 400 m of the river or the lake. Farmers applied pesticides at almost twice the recommended rates.⁹

The response has lagged. A US$55 million World Bank loan for Lake Qaraoun was signed in September 2016, and Law 63 of October 2016 made depollution a national programme. A mid-term review in March 2020 found only 18 of 441 km of planned sewers built and just 168 of 9,150 houses connected. Sewage from 69 towns, about 47 million m³ a year, still reached the river and the lake.¹¹

Toxic blooms in the reservoir

Lake Qaraoun now suffers annual blooms of potentially toxic cyanobacteria.²² A toxin-producing species was first reported there in 2009.²⁰ During the blooms of 2019 and 2020 researchers identified eleven microcystins in water and fish samples, with MC-LR reaching 211 µg/L.²¹ Nationally, only 6–7% of wastewater was treated before the 2024 war.¹⁰ Untreated sewage severely pollutes the Nahr el Kabir on the Syrian border, and olive-oil residues threaten the Hasbani.¹⁶¹⁴

Cholera returns

On 6 October 2022 Lebanon notified the WHO of two confirmed cholera cases, the first outbreak since 1993 and six weeks after Syria declared its own. Vibrio cholerae was found in drinking-water sources, irrigation water and sewage.¹⁷ By the end of the outbreak in June 2023 the WHO counted 8,007 suspected cases, 671 confirmed by laboratory and 23 deaths.¹⁸ A peer-reviewed study by ministry and WHO authors reports 8,072 cases.¹⁹ In September 2024 the Litani River Authority found cholera bacteria at two upper-Litani sampling points. A new case was confirmed in Akkar that October.¹²¹⁸

The reported indicators

Sources: WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme via the World Bank; SDG 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 from the UN Statistics Division SDG database, retrieved September 2026. Safely managed means an improved source on the premises, available when needed and free from priority contamination. SDG 6.3.2 rests on each country’s own monitoring network, so a high share can mean few water bodies were assessed, and values move when methods change between reporting rounds.

Lebanon shares three river systems. Each carries a different history: a crisis over the Hasbani, an allocation on the Orontes and a joint dam on the Nahr el Kabir that was never built.

The Hasbani and the Wazzani springs

The 1955 Johnston Plan allotted Lebanon 35 MCM a year of the Jordan basin. The Arab League rejected ratification that October.¹⁴ In 1964–65 Arab states moved to divert the Hasbani and Banias headwaters to the Yarmouk, and Israel bombed the works in 1965.¹⁴ The Hasbani carried 122 MCM a year on average between 1944 and 2008, and as little as 30 MCM in 1989–90.¹⁴

Israel held the Wazzani springs until it withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. In March 2001 the Council of the South installed two small pumps there. An official called them the first step towards liberating Lebanon’s water.²³ A larger station followed in 2002, designed to supply 13 villages with 4.4 MCM a year.¹⁴ On 10 September 2002 Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the plan a casus belli.²⁴ Lebanon said it would take less than 10 million m³ and wanted the dispute settled in a UN framework. President Lahoud said the project would continue.²⁵²⁶ US, UN and EU mediation failed. The station opened in 2002, but power shortages have held abstraction to at most 2.45 MCM a year since.¹⁴

The Orontes

A first Lebanon–Syria water agreement in 1972 never entered into force. The 1991 Treaty of Fraternity created a joint committee for shared water.¹⁵ In September 1994 the two states divided the Orontes water originating in Lebanon. Lebanon received 80 MCM a year and Syria the remaining 323 MCM, provided resources inside Lebanon reach 400 MCM. A 1997 annex, which the UN-ESCWA inventory judges unfavourable to Lebanon, excluded four sub-basins and a main spring from its share. A 2001 amendment allowed Lebanon to build a dam on the river.¹⁵ Mean flow at Hermel was 410 MCM a year between 1931 and 2011, and cooperation on the river has remained close.¹⁵

The Nahr el Kabir

The Nahr el Kabir forms the northern border for 77.8 km. Lebanon holds 26% of its 954 km² basin.¹⁶ After eight years of talks, an April 2002 agreement drew on the UN Watercourses Convention. It split the annual yield 40% to Lebanon and 60% to Syria, and provided for a joint dam near Noura al Tahta storing 70 MCM, with costs shared equally.¹⁶ Tenders followed in 2003 and 2011, and both governments released study funds in August 2011. The war in Syria then stalled the work.¹⁶

War damage since 2023

The 2024 war damaged water, wastewater and irrigation assets worth an estimated US$356 million. Recovery needs reach US$508 million.¹⁰ In the areas assessed, 58% of pumping stations and 64% of community distribution reservoirs were damaged or destroyed. So were three wastewater treatment plants and 77 km of irrigation canals.¹⁰ On 8 October 2024 an Israeli airstrike hit the main carrier of the Qasimiyah–Ras al-Ain irrigation project.¹³ Hostilities intensified sharply again from 2 March 2026. The UN flash appeal sought US$40 million for water and sanitation, warning that damage and fuel shortages at pumping stations put safe water at risk.²⁷

The record

Shared river basins

The register also places small areas of Lebanon in the An Nahr Al Kabir basin, too little to carry here.

Cooperation and conflict on the record, 1948 to 2008

The International Water Events Database scores every reported interaction between riparian states on the Basins at Risk scale, from formal war over water to voluntary unification. Cooperative and conflictive events add up to less than 100% because neutral events are counted too.

Source: Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, International Water Events Database, Oregon State University, as compiled by the Transboundary Waters Atlas. The series ends in 2008; every later dispute and agreement is outside it and is covered in the text above.

The agreements

Source: Master Treaties Database of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database (February 2023 edition), via the Transboundary Waters Atlas. Titles as recorded, with spelling normalised. Colonial-era boundary instruments appear because they fixed water rights on rivers that later became international.

Shared aquifers

• Anti-Lebanon Mountain rangeSyria · data moderate
• Eocene AquiferIsrael · data limited

Source: IGRAC and UNESCO, Transboundary Aquifers of the World. Data reliability is IGRAC’s own assessment of the information behind each outline.

Law No. 221 of 2000 organises the sector under the Ministry of Energy and Water.¹ Four regional Water Establishments, for North Lebanon, Beirut-Mount Lebanon, Bekaa and South Lebanon, run supply and wastewater.¹⁰ They set tariffs and rely on their own funds, without central budget support.⁵ The Litani River Authority, formed in 1954, governs the Litani basin.⁵ The crisis has hollowed out staff. The Beirut-Mount Lebanon establishment employed 782 of 1,120 authorised staff in 2020, and its workforce has fallen sharply since.⁵

Strategy

The government issued a National Water Sector Strategy in March 2012.⁸ An update followed in 2020, and the current strategy runs from 2024 to 2035.²⁵ It aims to improve water security, service delivery, utility finances and governance.⁵ Lebanon’s 2025 NDC names water services, including irrigation, as its third adaptation priority.⁴ The Water Code requires homes not connected to sewers to pay a wastewater fee, as a kind of pollution tax.²

Tariffs

Households pay a flat yearly fee for 1 m³ a day, which gives no reason to save water.⁸ The economic crisis cut its value from about US$200 to under US$20.⁵ After adjustments it stood at about US$150 a year in 2024.¹⁰ Even so, the sector lost 16% of accrued revenue a year.¹⁰ Irrigation shows another model. Farmers served by the Litani River Authority pay their bills, with collection rates of 97%.⁸

Lebanon’s water problem is institutional before it is hydrological. The country receives more rain than its neighbours, yet about half of its piped water earns no revenue and most wastewater goes untreated.³² Climate change will tighten the margin, with less rain, more compound heat and drought, and larger winter floods.²

The fixes are known: power for pumps and plants, working meters and collections, and a finished conveyor for Beirut. The 2024–2035 strategy and the second Beirut project point that way.⁵ Whether they deliver depends on staff, tariffs and a stable grid, all of which the crisis has eroded.