ANTALYA, TÜRKİYE – Liberia is calling for stronger international cooperation between countries exporting and importing petroleum products and second-hand vehicles, urging governments to establish harmonized environmental regulations that would prevent the movement of substandard products across international borders and help reduce air pollution and harmful emissions.
By Selma Lomax, [email protected]
The call was made by Dr. Emmanuel King Urey K. Yarkpawolo, Executive Director of Liberia’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), while speaking at a side event organized by the Benelux Union during the ongoing 31st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31) in Antalya, Türkiye, on Tuesday, November 10.
Dr. Yarkpawolo used the platform to highlight the need for a more coordinated international approach to regulating the quality of petroleum products and used vehicles entering developing countries, particularly African nations that continue to face challenges enforcing environmental standards at their borders.
He argued that the responsibility for ensuring cleaner fuels and environmentally compliant vehicles should not rest exclusively with importing countries, stressing that exporting nations must also play a decisive role in preventing environmentally harmful products from entering international markets.
The Liberian EPA chief commended the Benelux Union for championing regulatory measures at the point of export, describing the initiative as an
innovative approach that could significantly reduce the regulatory and enforcement burden faced by importing countries such as Liberia.
According to him, countries that export petroleum products and second-hand vehicles have an important responsibility to ensure that what they send into international markets meets acceptable environmental and quality standards before shipments leave their ports.
He maintained that a system that allows exporting countries to verify compliance before products reach their destinations would provide an additional layer of protection for countries with limited technical and institutional capacity to conduct extensive inspections upon arrival.
Dr. Yarkpawolo stressed that environmental protection should be treated as a shared international responsibility rather than an obligation imposed predominantly on developing countries that import large quantities of petroleum products and used vehicles.
Using a public-health analogy, he compared the situation to malaria prevention, explaining that efforts to treat people already infected with malaria would not permanently eliminate the disease if mosquitoes, which transmit the infection, were allowed to continue multiplying.
He argued that the same principle should guide international efforts to address environmental pollution associated with the fuel and automobile trade. In his view, concentrating regulatory efforts only at the point of importation addresses part of the problem without sufficiently confronting its source. He therefore called for stronger controls at both ends of the supply chain, beginning with the countries where petroleum products and vehicles originate.
The EPA Executive Director explained that importing countries must continue strengthening their environmental monitoring systems, but exporting nations should equally ensure that products meet established standards before they are dispatched.
He further emphasized that effective cooperation would require a reliable system of information-sharing between exporting and importing countries. Dr. Yarkpawolo noted that advance access to information concerning fuel quality, vehicle specifications and compliance documentation would significantly improve the ability of national inspectors to identify potentially harmful products before they enter domestic markets.
He said providing Liberian environmental and regulatory authorities with relevant information before shipments arrive at the country’s ports would strengthen border monitoring, improve enforcement and reduce the possibility of non-compliant products entering the Liberian market.
The EPA chief also pointed to the importance of building institutional capacity, noting that environmental regulations can only produce meaningful results when the agencies responsible for implementing them have access to the necessary technical information, equipment and cooperation from international partners.
He argued that the absence of coordinated information-sharing can create difficulties for importing countries, particularly when inspectors have limited opportunities to independently verify the quality and environmental characteristics of products arriving through international trade channels.
Dr. Yarkpawolo further emphasized that the objective should be to establish a system in which environmental standards are respected throughout the entire international supply chain, rather than allowing importing countries to inherit environmental problems created elsewhere.
“We cannot continue to look at environmental protection as the responsibility of the country receiving a product. If a fuel product or vehicle does not meet the required environmental standards, the exporting country should also take responsibility before that product leaves its territory. We must build a system where compliance begins at the source and continues until the product reaches its final destination,” he said.
He observed that such an arrangement would be particularly beneficial to African countries, many of which continue to experience difficulties monitoring the quality of imported petroleum products and second-hand
Dr. Yarkpawolo maintained that African countries should not be left to independently confront environmental challenges associated with international trade when the countries supplying those products can also contribute to preventing the circulation of substandard goods.
He called for expanded multi-stakeholder partnerships and stronger regional collaboration to harmonize clean-fuel standards across West Africa and the wider African continent.
According to him, a coordinated regional approach would help prevent countries from operating under significantly different regulatory requirements, potentially creating gaps that could be exploited by suppliers seeking markets with weaker enforcement systems.
He stressed that harmonization would not only strengthen environmental protection but also improve regulatory consistency and encourage greater accountability among businesses involved in the petroleum and automobile industries.
The EPA chief also underscored the importance of ensuring that African countries have a stronger voice in international discussions concerning environmental standards and the movement of products into their markets.
He said developing countries should be actively involved in shaping the regulatory frameworks that affect them, particularly when those frameworks have direct consequences for public health and environmental sustainability. “Countries like Liberia should not simply be recipients of decisions made elsewhere. We must be part of the discussions, understand the standards being established and have access to the information and technical support needed to enforce them. Our objective is not to restrict legitimate trade, but to ensure that trade takes place in a manner that protects human health, the environment and future generations,” he said.
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