Wastewater Generation and Environmental Pathways in Libya: An Evidence-Based National Accounting Framework

Abstract

Reliable national wastewater accounts are difficult to construct where direct flow measurements, treatment-plant records, and discharge inventories are incomplete. This study develops an evidence-aware accounting framework to estimate domestic wastewater generation and distinguish sewer-connected from non-networked sanitation pathways across Libya’s 22 administrative areas. The analysis integrates official 2021 population estimates, MICS7 (2024–2025) sanitation-connectivity data, a peer-reviewed Sirte household water-consumption benchmark of 255 L/person/day, and a six-month General Company for Water and Wastewater (GCWW) bulk water-supply dataset. Applying a central wastewater-return factor of 0.90 yields a reference generation rate of 229.5 L/person/day and an estimated national domestic wastewater generation of 1.606 million m³/day (586.3 million m³/year). Approximately 0.903 million m³/day is associated with sewer-connected populations and 0.704 million m³/day with non-networked sanitation, while 0.588 million m³/day of the sewer-connected component occurs in the nine coastal administrative areas. Additional scaling scenarios produce higher quantities but are treated as diagnostic rather than empirical national discharge estimates. The principal finding is that Libya’s major evidence gap is the absence of a harmonised accounting chain linking water supply, wastewater generation, collection, treatment, reuse, bypass, and discharge. The proposed framework provides a transparent baseline for monitoring, infrastructure planning, and future national wastewater inventories.