On August 4, 2020, Beirut is the victim of a double explosion of rare intensity which further weakened a country on the brink of collapse. This dramatic episode is unfortunately only one phase in the many crises that have hit the country in recent years: financial, political, social, economic and now health crises. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbates the already dramatic situation, but above all it reveals tensions in sectors hitherto with little work done in the Lebanese context, particularly food. SAR_Li proposes, from the changes observed in food systems (FS), to identify the conditions for strengthening food security in Lebanon and the resilience of the food system. Three specific objectives lead us: to diagnose and characterize the food system in Lebanon, pre-crisis situation; identify the ruptures caused by the economic, health and political crises in Lebanon; propose paths of resilience based on innovative local approaches hybridized with experiences carried out abroad. In order to achieve these objectives, we will identify the necessary initiatives across the planet, but also locally, to make viable proposals, already proven but mainly adapted to the Lebanese context. Then, we will decipher the Lebanese food system by carrying out three detailed studies: the FS study through the consumer’s input: example of Bourj Hammoud district; the study of FS through the Organizational policy: example of Central Bekaa; the study of FS through the Alternative and innovative actions. We will pay particular attention to the genericity and applicability of our results. They will not be a simple “copy and paste” of foreign procedures, but a consolidation of good Lebanese practices by enriching them with various experiences. However, an innovation, like the one we are going to propose, is only successful if it is socially accepted. This is the reason why SAR_Li is designed to involve stakeholders in the food sector in Lebanon from the upstream.

In scientific works as well as in political arrangements, resilience has become an inescapable qualifier to describe the resistance capacity of the Lebanese to the different crises that have impacted Lebanon. Few studies have focused on activating the territorial dimension of these crises, particularly the health crisis. However, it is in the multi-scalar territorial deployments that the socio-economic dynamics are played out and that the implementation of an effective and sustainable risk management system is required. The DITES project takes up the issue of resilience in a systemic approach to grasp all levels of governance, from the State to citizens. Its objective is to reassess and propose methods of cooperation between the territorial levels in order to define modes of governance that would allow us to anticipate and adapt to different crises. Governance is understood here as the roles and responsibilities of actors at different levels of action, whether state or non-state, at national and local levels, to ensure the smooth running, continuity and sustainability of activities. To this end, DITES will initiate an unprecedented identification of the mobilities that take place between territories, which have last or emerged during the pandemic. DITES will also explore public policies in the setting up of associations and networks between territories. DITES thus aims to grasp the complex partnerships of state governance with that of ordinary practices, between public norms and their accommodation with other actors (municipalities and civil society) for greater efficiency and legitimacy in everyday life. It is the role of planners, geographers, architects and urban planners to draw attention to the challenges of taking into account the way territories function in order to better understand the facts in times of crisis. These professionals are the best placed to propose inclusive modes of governance so that the recommendations made by elected officials are as close as possible to the fieldwork and lead to greater support from the population for the measures implemented. A guide document will be developed to propose an action plan for resilient cities and territories.

The pursuit of wide-scale unrestricted wastewater effluent reuse still faces significant challenges in its successful implementation at the local level. Energy and resource efficiency of wastewater treatment are universal requirements due to the potential for greenhouse gas emissions and costs associated with energy and chemical input. Further, the presence of persistent and emerging contaminants in wastewater sources is a hindrance to the necessary role that wastewater reclamation must play in the Mediterranean region. Based on the outstanding issues facing the successful widespread implementation of wastewater reuse and preservation of surface water quality, the development, advancement, and application of the emerging technology known as the anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) for direct and unrestricted wastewater reuse is proposed. To achieve this, the objectives of the proposed work is to address and overcome the remaining challenges facing AnMBR technology which have thus far prevented its implementation at the full-scale for wastewater treatment. In addition to achieving availability of safe wastewater reuse for unrestricted irrigation, this research will also serve to improve surface water quality by mitigating poorly treated waste sources and reducing contaminant loading. This will be accomplished by performing the experiments necessary for AnMBR process optimization, scale-up, and thorough assessment of contaminant fates for the purpose of ensuring chemical and microbial safety during effluent reuse practices.

Energy problems play an important role in the global development of industrial and underdeveloped countries. Energy issues are usually accompanied with the challenging trade off of energy production and environmental sustainability. Recently, an offshore reserve of Oil and Gas was localized in the Mediterranean Sea near the Lebanese coast. The Lebanese Government set up a new “Gas and Oil Committee” belonging to the Water and Energy Ministry. The goal of this Committee is to publish tenders for Gas and Oil Offshore inspection and exploitation. An increasing demand for Engineers in the field of new reservoir drilling and fuel raw material processing is expected in the upcoming twenty-five years.The Lebanese Higher Education sector is a well-developed one. This sector regroups one public University which is the Lebanese University and more than 50 private universities. All the Lebanese universities’ curricula are one step behind in the field of Gas and Oil processing. This is due to the fact that the country is not a producer of this kind of raw material. Two refineries were present in the country before the civil war (1975-1989). Those refineries were completely destroyed during the civil war and their actual role has been reduced to the imported fuel storage. This project will address all the above problems by setting up a new teaching curriculum at the Lebanese universities by a joint effort with the European universities members of the Consortium. This project will also help in creating a network of Lebanese and European universities promoting academic excellence through joint research, education, and exchange of experience. This will contribute in the sustainable development of the Lebanese higher educational system and in improving the career prospects of scholars in their home countries.This new curriculum will allow forming engineers who can produce and manage innovation in the chemical, Gas and Oil processing, environmental, and new materials sectors.

CONFINED will develop and validate an innovative, comparative, and global research agenda of confined lives. Confinement is a ubiquitous and unequally distributed human condition. While confinement sometimes can be protective, for some groups, not least the displaced on dangerous roads, the marginalized in urban slums and the detained in prisons, it can be a damaging experience linked to violence and inequality. With an empirical point of departure in different contexts across the global north and south, known to produce a variety of confined lives, CONFINED explores, 1) how certain people’s lives are rendered confineable; 2) how confineable groups and networks navigate discursive, actual, and potential practices of confinement, and 3) how and to what extent the concept of confined lives can transform our understanding of the practices and experiences of confinement across global divides in ways that drive theoretical innovation and help build new agendas for social justice. Through three interdependent and sequentially organized work packages, CONFINED proposes to explore confined lives contextually and ethnographically across the global North and South (WP1); to compare what confines people, how they make sense of their confined lives, and how they navigate confinement (WP2), and to conceptually develop and validate the approach through engagement with academics and experts locally and globally (WP3). CONFINED will carry out comparative, ethnographic field work to follow precariously situated translocal family network across four contexts as a privileged lens to understanding confined lives at the intersection of dangerous journeys, urban slums and prisons and camps: Denmark and Lebanon; South Africa and Malawi; Thailand and Myanmar and the UK and Sierra Leone. This will allow CONFINED to reframe the empirical field of confined lives and to generate a new conceptual language to understand one of the most important drivers of inequality world-wide.