Liberia is at a Brink of Irreversible Environmental/Ecological Impotency
By Syrulwa Somah, Ph.D.
The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia
December 28, 2004
As the Liberian society looks forward to the new coming sweeping moon and more hopeful future in 2005 and a 4th republic, our nation must be reminded that the environment is in a grave danger unless an appropriate or effective and efficient integrated system of environmental management is implemented. It is against this background that this article is written to make a clarion call to action for “doing it right this time around”. To give you a better picture of this imminent danger of environmental disaster, let me begin by telling you where Liberia is coming from, where the country now is, and where I think it ought to be headed. Unquestionably, Liberia’s environment is no longer that wonderment of colossal geological formations of God's creation that once stirred in the face of Liberians and non-Liberians. It is being lost to deforestation, pollution, extinction of treasure trove of species, habitats, and the situation is likely to plunge the nation into a future civil war when our population increases and land becomes scarce.
Liberia’s Environment in the Past
It is not a secret that Liberia is straddled in the high rainfall area of West Africa, uniquely bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the south, Sierra Leone to the west, Guinea to the north and Ivory Coast to the east. Equally important, Liberia is a relatively sparsely populated country compared to other sub-Saharan African nations. With its high regional rainfall, rivers and lakes crisscross Liberia, which encompasses 15 river basins, abundant streams and four types of coastal wetlands such as the Mesurado, Lake Shepherd, Bafu Bay and inland riverine like Marshall (Du and Farmington basins) and the Cestos-Senkwehn, Kpatawe (Kromah, 2001). These bodies of water were not only striking coral formations but were often scenes of natural attractiveness that makes Liberia the number one waterfalls nation in Africa and the world. The respondent beauty of our nation is due to the rainfall and temperature in Liberia which determine the growth of vegetation, which shared incentives are slowing down soil erosion and enriching soil with nutrients from decomposing organic material or humus. The ample vegetation of tropical forest environments produces large quantities of humus, which is concentrated on the forest floor. In the savanna grasslands of Liberia, humus extends to a greater depth in the soil to support rice and cassava growth, our staple food.
A central spine of coastal plains once dominated Liberia, plateau, rolling hills mountains and range - the Bong Range, Putu Range, and Mount Nimba (Wuteve, the tallest and source of the Ya and Cavalla Rivers), with many peaks over (5,748 feet) with glacis ambient. Other mountains that shaped the geographical landscape of Liberia are Mt. Bee of Gibi and Mt. Wologisi, the 2nd highest peak in Liberia www.tlcafrica.com. Ninety percent of these mountains were covered by tropical rainforests, and the remainder is made up of delta plains, flat savannah, grassland and six special species of mangroves in the likes of Rhizophora harrisonnia, the mangle and Avicinnia Africana (Kromah, 2001). An estimated 200 species of plant and animal are native to the Mount Nimba ecosystems. (http://www.tlcafrica.com) The principal rivers include the (St. John River, Cestos River - also known as Nuon in the Dan or Gio language- the Yar River, near Cocopa in Nimba) St. Paul River, Cavalla (Youbou), Mano, just to name a few of Liberia’s magnificent rivers.
The natural beauty of Liberia also includes an abundance of forests covering nearly 14 million acres, including 230 species of useable timber such as Mahogany, palm trees, some of which have several heads, sacred oracles, Walnut, and Makere red ironwood (Ekki for house and bridge building) Teak, Whismore, Camwood, Abura, Niango; while wildlife such as elephants, viviparous toad, cross river gorilla, water buffalo, lions, zebra duiker, leopards, diana monkey, white mangabey, chimpanzees, pygmy hippopotamus, the only kind in the world, and eagles are plentiful. (http://www.tlcafrica.com) The nation of Liberia is blessed with magnificent birds such as the “dancing birds” to gymnobucco calvus, gymnobucco peli, pogoniulus scolopaceus, pogoniulus white-breasted guinea fowl atroflavus, pogoniulus subsulphureus, buccanodon duchaillui and lybius vieilloti (http://www.tlcafrica.com), many of which now bear foreign names, so when listed, we do not know if they are native to Liberia.
Liberia enjoys the earth’s finest climate and fertile soil for agricultural enterprise, growing bananas, rice, plantain, bitter ball, cassava, Malaguatta pepper, mushroom, coffee, kola, cocoa, mango, okra, palm nuts, papaya, rubber, and much more. Iron ore tops the list of Liberia’s mineral wealth, making this country one of the leading iron ore exporters in the world. Liberia’s minerals, i.e., barite, cyanite, diamonds, gold, graphite, and manganese. Our ancestors used their environmental wisdom and spirituality to forewarn Liberians, their succeeding generations, against the concept of private property and selling their homeland to foreign concessions, especially without regard to their belief system, spiritual and cultural cannons, norms and mores of the land. The belief system of the indigenous Liberian people cherishes the universal bond between God, environment and human kind.
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It is said that nothing is ever really settled in history. Liberia, then and now, is a proof of that. Since the inception of Liberia, the principle of discrimination has been a cornerstone. In other words, US involvement with Liberia has been one of its troubled pasts; producing imbalances, creating ethnic conflicts, poverty, general misery, civil wars and dependency.
A few cases can be made without the rewriting of history. The administration of President Daniel E. Howard, from 1912 to 1920, was not just afflicted with wars on all fronts, but Liberia had to deal with dreadful national assets to the point that civil servants’ wages were paid intermittently. World War I took a heavy toll on the country’s revenue intakes. There was a zero balance in revenue due to the naval blockade by German submarines, which lasted until 1920. When the C.D.B King government turned to the U.S. for assistance during the Harding presidency, the negotiation dragged on from March to October 1921. While the State Department was reportedly sympathetic with Liberia, the U.S. Congress interestingly failed to authorize the accord. (The African Repository, Library of Congress); (Richardson, N.R., 1959. Liberia’s Past and Present. London: Diplomatic Press).
This scenario cleared the way for Mr. Harbel Firestone to lease Liberian land at mere 6 cents an acre to simply loot the product use in the manufacturing of rubber. Though he pledged to construct roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, he failed to deliver; he used as an excuse, a $5-million loan Liberia incurred under relentless pressure from the United States. The Liberian Ambassador George Padmore vividly captured this “historical duping” of our nation in his book Memoirs of Liberian Ambassador (Mellen Press, 1996), the company demanded the Liberian government to accept a loan of $5 million at the rate of 7 percent interest, failing which Firestone would not carry through its proposed development scheme. The Liberian people were reluctant to accept this heavy financial obligation but finally succumbed to the coercion of the great colossus of the north.
With the official indebtedness as a result of the loan, Liberia was never the same as this land grab made the Firestone Company the world's largest rubber plantation owner. There were ultra- misuse and pillage of the country’s minerals, other resources and its people’s labor. The platform for land grabbing by other companies, which goes on even now, had been erected. The Liberia Agriculture Company (LAC) is a case in point. The rubber plantation in Maryland County is another example. (The Perspective, 2004) By the 1920s, the industrial deforestation of Liberia in the name of national development begun with the King presidency. President King could not handle the financial exigency, which spilled over from the Howard administration. As Liberian historians put it, "From 1940 to 1945, rubber was analogous to the United States, what crude oil was in the 1970s--it was scarce worldwide, and it was expensive. There were two reasons for this demand: first, Japan had invaded and confiscated the world's major sources of natural-rubber supply in the Far East (Malaysia and Singapore); and secondly, because scientists were still working on the creation of synthetic rubber, and whatever information the industrialized world had on synthetic rubber was still at its experimental stage ". (See Peter Morris’ book on “The American Synthetic Rubber Industry, CHF Press).
Because of this, the United States and its allies demanded that all German citizens in Liberia be expelled while the Americans monopolized Liberia’s rubber industry. The Germans were considered a “security risk to the United States and its allies”. Now we know that US President Franklin D. Roosevelt afflicted with cold, is said to have ignored his physician’s advice and made a brief stop at Roberts International Airport in 1943 to ascertain that his country’s demands were met. All German citizens were expelled and barred from Liberia. Their properties liquated to please Liberia’s so-called traditional friend, the United States. For the most part, this became an expensive venture for our nation as German merchants not only contribute to the Liberian economy, they were also major trading partner of Liberia. Moreover, most of the medical doctors working in Liberia at the time, were German nationals. Liberia under tremendous pressure from the Americans, disregarded the benefits they were receiving from the Germans went on to expel them.
In the middle 40s, the William V.S. Tubman administration
followed through with the gradual deforestation that
continued as a strategy for national development.
In 1944, Tubman instituted the "Open Door Policy"
which laid the groundwork for extensive land use and
industrialization. Tubman's policy was designed to
encourage foreign investment in Liberia, which would
freely develop iron ore deposits and other mineral
resources. (Hayman, A. I. & Preece, H. 1943. Lighting
Up Liberia. New York: Creative Age Press, Inc.) (The
African Repository, Library of Congress) Under this
policy, investors were exempted from taxes. For example,
Colonel Lansdell K. Christie, a New York native was
the first businessman to answer to President Tubman’s
Open Door Policy. This paid off when he successfully
bargained and acquired a mining right in 1946 to mainly
exploited iron ore deposits, in the Bomi Range with
its highest grade of ore containing about 66 percent
iron. The “Christie Foundation,” the Liberian
Mining Company, first major mining operation became
the second major industrial company to Firestone Rubber
Plantations Company. (http:bomihills.org/Liberia.html)
“Monkey work, baboon draw" (a common reference
by Liberians concerning corruption and development)
became a practice of Liberia’s policy makers
through which, corrupt and selfish leaders use to
enrich themselves at the expense of the Liberian people.
This has become a pattern - evidence by an overt negligence
of Liberia’s critical assets in the name of
foreign investment. This approach or practice has
been an obnoxious misallocation of Liberia's indispensable
resources.
The question that one may then ask is, how was Liberia
to be developed or how could reforestation take place
when it was never a crucial part of these agreements?
The environmental consequences of development were
certainly not a priority. Many feasibility studies
were implemented by experts, who often had connections
with companies interested in doing business in Liberia.
The bias in this unbalanced business pattern allowed
experts and neutral third parties to have allegiance
with these companies. Most of the recommendations
reached by these unbiased experts never included any
environmental or ecological faults. Challenges were
not made in most cases as the nation did not have
the experts to make them, especially when the populace
was not brought up-to-date on these future impacts.
As long as the corporation's presence kept the government
economically stable, the future plight of the environment,
after these companies have left, was sadly a task
left to future generations. One of the tragedies in
the history of Liberia is that her leaders are usually
misled by the word "development" or “money
talks.”
There is a need to undertake an integrative model
of environmental management for Liberia and its people
to deal with issue of negative external ideas and
influences or better approach for foreign ideas and
influences to harness it into positive national development.
Development is the act and process of making improvement.
A definition of development does not state the final
conditions. It means the process of making something
better. Therefore, the Liberian government must be
aware that some developments could be detrimental
to the country's future, culture and heritage. India's
late Prime Minister Gandhi epitomized this point when
she addressed a conference in Stockholm on Human Environment:
"A higher standard of living must be achieved
without alienating the people from their heritage."
There should be no fear in the minds of those who
are in power to demand answers from companies that
come to Liberia in the name of development. Herein,
development should mean what these companies must
leave behind, which are favorable conditions that
will sustain the Liberian people in years to come
and not what these companies carry with them and leave
behind conditions that are likely to lead to lifetime
destruction.
At this juncture, Liberia is at peril due to an assault
on the sacred reverence of its environment by those
who have limited knowledge on how we expressed our
affinity with the environment. And such a denial of
Liberia’s universal validity is nothing less
than an assault on its intrinsic values and spirituality.
Liberians must resist this assault now. Liberians
must never remain silent to the slow death of its
environment. Indeed, there are laws that cover some
aspects of environmental controls. They should be
given “teeth”, made stronger and clearer.
For example, Article 33 of the Health Ministry Laws
of Liberia prohibits the dumping of waste in Liberian
waters. However, during past administrations, the
Minister of Planning, or whichever ministry/department
is responsible for contract negotiation, allowed large
companies like the National Ore Mining Company at
Mano River, LAMCO and Bong Mining Companies to pollute
the St. John River, the Mano River and their tributaries
with iron ore dust and other residues of the iron
ore production process. Even areas set aside by preceding
governments for conservation and or scientific inquiry
like the Sarpo National Park and Gola National Forest
in Upper Cape Mount County and Lower Lofa County are
in and off of the hands of logging companies or at
the mercy of poachers, says Mr. Alexander Peal of
Conservation International/Liberia. Traditional deforestation
or small farming has become the order of the day as
the result of not having in place national programs
for alternative and systematic management.
In the 1980s, the Liberian government decided to allocate
more than 284,000 acres in Sinoe County for the University
of Liberia to conduct forestry studies and other scientific
research. In 2000 those areas were turned over to
Oriental Timber Company (OTC). In retrospect, it is
not in our national interest to have an environmental
protection law during the administration of one leader
and it becomes non-existent under another administration.
It is due to the lack of national priority or proper
environmental policy and clear delineation of vision
that the Upper Guinea Forest with its estimated 551
diversities of species of mammals, are under threat
without realizing that these vast insect populations
play a critical role in our ecosystems. Some insects
are of particular importance to our agricultural well-being
as soil modifiers. For example, while we may see termites
as ants that have nothing to do but bites those who
trouble them, termites are both friend and foe to
our environment.
In colonies ants enhance soil fertility by transporting
and concentrating fertile subsoil clays near the surface
and by increasing soil aeration. Some of the species
in the forest, 45% of which is owned by our country,
cannot be found anywhere else in the world. That in
itself is not just good news for tourist’s attraction
but a divine blessing. YLII logging activities of
the Exotic Tropical Timber Enterprise (ETTE) is decimating
these ecosystems leaving nothing for our people.
Between 1997 and 2001 the company increased it activities
by 1.3%, decimating about 12% of the forest’s
727,900 square-kilometers. Presently, one of Liberia’s
rarest and sacred wonders, the Mt. Gibi’s Oracle,
a “rock kitchen” upheld by two rock pillars,
which extends against the walls of the mountain and
resembles the Hanging Garden of Babylon, is also under
threat of destruction. Environmental destruction threatens
rarest and sacred white bats and Zhor birds, known
for their unusual long necks that are endemic in that
region. Other wildlife in the vicinities of Mt. Gibi
and its sister Mt. Zeesiah are facing similar fates.
(Larway, 2004) A rare rock of the waterfalls, containing
human footprints, could be stolen or destroyed at
any moment. The current expulsion of 60,000 Bassa
villagers by LAC is classic example of the abuse directed
at the Liberian people, along with gross human rights
violations and the destruction of the environment
for which presidential aspirants and current leaders
of the country remain mute.
Liberians could learn a thing or two from the Sudanese
civil war that killed over a million people and an
estimated 3.5 million displaced refugees as the world
looks on. While this conflict has many causes, the
primary factors of the recent catastrophe derived
from systematic or protracted environmental from deforestation,
which turned majority of the area into sand dooms.
Having too many citizens and not enough land for farming
and competition led to this sad event. (See Mohamed
Suliman’s article, Civil War in Sudan: The Impact
of Ecological Degradation, 1995). My point here is
while Liberia is sparsely populated and its population
was decimated by its 14 years civil war, Liberians
must avoid a Sudanese-like future conflict, if at
all Liberia can use history as a divine rod of guidance.
Frankly, changing weather patterns cannot be averted
when the environment is destroyed. Despite our richness
of vegetation, some of our soils are poor, therefore
Liberians need to change their appetite for foreign
concessions now. Deforestation can only increase the
already heavy rainfall in the area, which will be
acidified as rain passes through organic material
on the forest floor and leaches most of the mineral
content from the upper soil layers. Such will result
to oxisols ore quite infertile, forcing plants to
gain most of their nutrient needs from decaying vegetation.
When one travel throughout Liberia today, especially
where deforestation is ongoing, oxisols, a reddish
or yellowish in color, reflecting the high concentrations
of iron and aluminum compounds in them are everywhere.
Plants do not grow on this type of soil.
The pace at which the environment is being depleted
suggests that Liberia stands to suffer additional
consequences now being experienced by some nations
around the world. The next reason for which Liberia
must act now is that over the past two years, several
Asian nations suffered exceptionally heavy losses
from natural disasters. These loses are put at about
US$ billion of dollars. In 1998, extreme floods devastated
several countries including Bangladesh, China and
Viet Nam. El Niño-related droughts caused water
shortages and forest fires in Indonesia and the Philippines.
A Ten-meter tsunami hit Papua New Guinea killing more
than 2,000 people in several coastal villages while
the Kobe earthquake of 1995 killed over 5,000 people
and caused tremendous damage. In economic terms, the
damage from recent floods in Bangladesh was estimated
at more than 5 per cent of the gross domestic product.
Also, Japan’s Kobe earthquake cost over US$100
billion. Recently, tropical storm Jeanne with its
mudslide and heavy rains in Haiti killed more than
1,500 people. Changing global climate contributed
to 150,000 dead in 2000. (World Health Organization,
2000).
In the December 6, 2004 article, “Filipinos
Scramble to Escape Villages”, Oliver Teves underscored
the end results of our changing world weather due
to environmental factors. “Back-to-back storms
that killed at least 568 and left hundreds missing
contributing to flash floods and mudslides that swept
away hundreds of houses, roads and bridges in what
has been the southeast Asian nation's worst storm
season in 13 years”, he concluded. As of this
moment, nations like Indonesia, India, Thailand, Sri
Lanka, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Bangladesh and
Somalia (an African nation 3,000 miles from the Indonesia
earthquake), have lost an estimated 23,000 people
as the result of an earthquake, one of the most powerful
ones in the in four decades, measuring magnitude 9,
contributing a tsunamis across the Indian Ocean. Besides
the missing of thousand citizen peoples, diseases
like malaria and cholera are expected due to destroyed
sanitation, sanitary problems, polluted drinking water,
and that the cost of the catastrophe would is expected
to be several billions of dollars (Jan Egeland, the
U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator) (ABC News).
Make no mistake! Climate change as a result of Liberian
environmental degradation will have an adverse impact
on Liberian people’s health in occurrence of
vector-borne diseases such as Malaria, Dengue Fever,
Yellow Fever, etc. When the forests are all gone and
rainfall rises above normal levels, collecting and
stagnating or still water will provide excellent breeding
grounds for mosquitoes and other disease vectors.
The World Health Organization (WHO) puts the consequences
into proper perspective. Accordingly, an estimated
300 million people worldwide suffer from intense malaria
annually. The impact is critical for women of childbearing
age, many of whom will suffer from anemia, thereby
prompting premature delivery and low birth-weight.
As such, malaria is a primary disease in Africa and
a primary cause of poverty of which Liberia is a part.
For the most part, not only nine out of 10 episodes
occur in south Saharan Africa, but also Africa's gross
domestic product (GDP) today would surpass 32 if malaria
had been eradicated 35 years ago on this issue. (See
Harvard University’s Research, 2001).
Liberia’s current environmental action will
produce the climatic conditions in Liberia that creates
a conducive breeding ground for malaria-transmitting
mosquitoes, which have over the years will become
hard to control because they have developed a resistance
to insecticides. Liberians need not run head on with
the disasters that are manageable. Nations like Kenya,
Tanzania, and Zambia, just to name a few that have
experienced the same fate, are now turning their nation
around. For example, Zambia has embarked on an anti-malaria
drive, an integrated, community-based approach that
aims at selling nets and insecticide in districts
grappling with the tasks of controlling the spread
of malaria. In this case environmental protection
is at center stage. The Japanese government has partnership
with the Zambian government to supply them with pesticide-treated
mosquito nets, malaria drugs, and other paraphernalia
for their program.
We now know that chloroquine -- the cheapest anti-malarial
drug is useless as patients or Africans have developed
resistance to it and global warming, which is encouraging
malaria vectors to flourish to the development of
world-wide parasite resistance to anti-malaria drugs,
is not helping the situation. (Gerald Keusch, Multilateral
Initiative on Malaria) Furthermore, Liberia is experiencing
an unusual extremely hot dry season temperature. Though
research has yet to confirm if Liberians are dying
from hot temperature, an estimated 20,000 people who
died as the result of extremely hot temperatures in
Europe (ABC News, 2004), is a classic example and
a fate in which Liberia is not excluded. Unlike Liberia,
these nations have the resources and manpower.
Who will come to Liberia’s assistance or give
the country $100 billion dollars to rebuild its ruined
infrastructures when these sorts of natural disasters
befall the country because of deforestation? We do
ourselves no good when communities that have traditionally
managed Liberia’s forests are disgraced by recent
changes in their political systems to the point where
their customs have been destroyed. In an article written
by the Samfu Foundation, the concessions listed below
were named as the concessions responsible for the
destruction and deforestation of Liberia:
