Climate change threatens Lebanon's snow, cedars

* Sparse snowfall may be foretaste of warmer climate

* Politics, conflict distract from environmental crisis

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

FARAYA, Lebanon, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Lebanon's ski resorts have survived civil war but now face an insidious threat from climate change expected to cut snow cover by 40 percent by 2040.

The effects of global warming are still a low priority for conflict-prone Lebanon, where environmental neglect rules.

Skiers and the tourist businesses that depend on them hope this year's warm winter and brief season was not a harbinger of the future for the Arab world's only snow playgrounds.

Christian Rizk, 47, manager of the Mzaar ski resort near Faraya, shies away from that idea, saying the season, which spanned barely half the once-normal three months, might have been an aberration. But he says the resort is adapting anyway.

"Last season was catastrophic," he told Reuters on a sunny late autumn morning near the barren slopes of Jebel Sannin, Lebanon's second highest mountain at 2,695 metres. "This year we are installing new ski-lifts higher up, above 2,000 metres."