Chapter 5: Lebanon: Fig Holding and SDG#1 No Poverty

Poverty reduction is pivotal for sustainable development and has been identified as the first sustainability goal (SDG#1) by the United Nations. Poverty has remained a key challenge for countries in the Arab world, which is characterised by persisting levels of poverty and significant income inequalities, where the top 10% of people account for 64% of all wealth (Alvaredo et al., 2021). Arab states have undertaken diverse efforts to reduce poverty on national and regional levels to operationalise the 2030 Sustainability Agenda. Nevertheless, the achievements of objectives have been rendered difficult by numerous challenges such as ongoing regional conflicts, civil wars, political instabilities and refugee crises (mainly due to the Syrian war). Factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent Ukrainian war have also impacted food security and aggravated the poverty situation in the region (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia [UNESCWA], 2023). Insights regarding poverty in the region come from the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which is published by the United Nations Development Programme and measures factors of living conditions that affect family spending and poverty rates, such as health, education and living standards (such as nutrition, child mortality, years of schooling, sanitation, electricity, drinking water and assets, among other factors). The MPI showed that in the aftermath of COVID-19, the Arab region experienced a significant household income loss with an extreme poverty rate of 11.3% in 2023 (UNESCWA, 2023). The pandemic has pushed eight million additional people into extreme poverty, and a total of 48 million individuals in the Arab world are now living below the poverty line (UNESCWA, 2023). The 2nd Arab multidimensional poverty report (UNESCWA, 2023) also states that the number of moderately poor people has reached 131 million of a total of 464 million inhabitants in 2023, which is an additional 22 million people compared with pre-COVID-19 times (UNESCWA, 2023). Different surveys converge in their findings that between 70% and 85% of families in non-oil-producing countries in the region have to borrow money or rely on some form of aid to cover their monthly needs, which renders them vulnerable and likely to slip into poverty (Khoury, 2019).