Energy Minister Joe Sadi Discusses Electricity and Water Sector Reforms at Civil Impact Forum

The "Civil Impact Forum" hosted Energy and Water Minister Dr. Joe Sadi within the framework of its "Forum Sessions" dialogues, at the Forum's headquarters in downtown Beirut, attended by academic, economic, and administrative figures.

To begin with, the Forum's Board Member Engineer Elie Jabrail spoke about "enhancing responsible dialogue between state institutions and active societal forces regarding national priorities and reform paths," emphasizing that "reforming the energy and water sectors constitutes a structural test of the state's ability to restore institutional regularity and public policy effectiveness." He considered that "accumulated crises go beyond technical and financial imbalances to affect the nature of governance, clarity of responsibilities, independence of institutional decision-making, and mechanisms of accountability and oversight."

He affirmed that "energy and water security is an integral part of the structural reforms that must be adopted, alongside the need to build a sustainable institutional model requiring integrated public policies based on transparency, social justice, and protection of national resources, thereby establishing reform as a sovereign and institutional act in the path of rebuilding the state."

Meanwhile, the Forum's Executive Director Ziad Al-Saigh asked about "ways to transition from crisis management in the energy and water sectors to sustainable structural reform, enhancing governance and the independence of regulatory bodies, defining executive priorities and accountability mechanisms, achieving financial sustainability, attracting investments, ensuring fairness in service distribution, developing renewable energies and sustainable water resource management, and linking energy and water security to Lebanese national security."

Subsequently, Sadi presented his intervention on the reality of the energy and water sectors in Lebanon, the structural, financial, and institutional challenges they face, and the reform priorities and treatment paths, in light of good governance requirements, service sustainability, and protection of national resources.

According to a statement by the Forum, the meeting included an open dialogue on legislative and organizational priorities, restructuring relevant institutions, activating oversight frameworks, achieving balance between economic viability and social justice, and modernizing the energy and water sectors to enhance state effectiveness and citizens' trust in its institutions. In conclusion, the importance of moving from circumstantial approaches to implementable, measurable, and accountable public policies emerged, along with linking energy and water sector reforms to an integrated national path to restore institutional regularity, enhance national security, and consolidate the state of constitution, law, and good governance. This meeting comes within the Forum's efforts through the "Forum Sessions" to provide a closed and specialized dialogue platform to discuss fundamental national issues from a public policy perspective, promote a culture of accountability and responsible interaction between the state and society, and accompany reform paths and state-building in Lebanon.