Lebanese Environment Minister Nazem Khoury urged collecting taxes on the basis of pollution volume and not production volume.

Representing Lebanese President, House Speaker, and Premier, Minister Nazem Khoury partook in the Annual Conference of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) entitled "Green Economy" scheduled for 27-28 October 2011 at the Habtoor hotel, Beirut.

"Our conference aims at reinforcing the role of Green Economy in our Arab world," Khoury said and explained the link between the economy and the environment's natural resources, which in turn, are the source of every agricultural development and the primary resources of all industry types.
Environment, the Minister said, in its integrated concept, forms the main pillar of sustainable tourism. 

The new generations want a better Arabic environment, "he added 

To such a degree Arab resources' sustainability is endangered and this makes the whole Arab region in face of an environmental, economic, and social deterioration, he said.

"This ought to incite us to set a diversified and integrated mechanism in the region to reinforce environment situation," he said reminding of the Green Economy role to embody a solution via Environmental Fiscal Reform.

He thus explained the "taxing the bad and not the good" principle and said we should start reducing taxation rates on human resources (labor force, and social security taxes), and elevate them on polluters such as solid waste and Carbone Dioxide Emissions.