Monrovia – As part of Promoting Sustainable Environmental Action project supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unprecedented small grant program for youth-led development organization working on environmental issues, the Youth Exploring Solutions has trained 125 Young Environmental Justice Ambassadors to safeguard the wetlands and mangroves around the 72nd, Police Academy, and SKD Boulevard communities.
Liberia’s Young Environmental Justice Ambassadors are trained, prepared and equipped to conduct various voluntary grassroots initiatives to protect the wetlands from consistent pollution, deforestation of mangroves, sand mining, dumping of waste, and construction of infrastructural facilities, latrines, and connection of sewer pipelines directly in the wetlands.
The Young Environmental Justice Ambassadors were trained through the first-ever Liberian Environmental Awareness Forum (LEAF), an activity outlined as one of the integral parts of the project.
LEAF is a crowd-souring and voluntary grassroots-based solutions platform designed to engage, educate and empower young people to develop and implement voluntary grassroots action utilizing their energy, enthusiasm, and innovation with the appropriate toolkits and conceptual resources.
It is a youth-centered and participatory approach intended to tackle environmental challenges in wetlands and mangroves.
Walker Tokpah of the Society for the Conservation for Nature of Liberia (SCNL) in a PowerPoint presentation revealed that wetlands are lakes and rivers, swamps and marshes, wet grasslands and peat lands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, near-shore marine areas, mangroves and coral reefs, and human made sites such as fishponds, rice paddies, reservoirs, and saltpans.
Expounding on the importance of wetlands, Tokpah indicated that wetlands deliver a wide range of ecosystem services such as water supply, water purification, climate regulation, flood regulation, coastal protection, biodiversity and useful fibres, recreational opportunities and tourism which contribute to sustainable livelihoods through economic activity linked to transportation, food, pollution control, fishing and hunting, leisure and the provision of ecological infrastructure.
“At a global level, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found that inland and coastal wetland ecosystems were (in 2005) being lost at a rate faster than that of any other ecosystem, and the trend towards loss of wetlands resources has not been reversed since” Tokpah lamented.
“The primary indirect drivers of degradation and loss are population growth and increasing economic development; the primary direct drivers of degradation and loss are infrastructure development, land conversion, water withdrawal, eutrophication and pollution, over harvesting and over exploitation, and invasive alien species”.
The SCNL staff member pointed out the critical importance of wetlands for mitigating the effects of climate change and adaptation to climate change in particular for its impacts as well as the participation of stakeholders to promote mainstreaming of wetlands values (goods, services, and benefits) within water and biodiversity management including public and private investments.
Meanwhile, the Young Environmental Justice Ambassadors have developed series of voluntary grassroots activities including: the establishment of green spaces through coconut and plum trees planting initiatives, landscaping, and beautification along the roadside, and visitation to many nature reserves.
The Young Environmental Justice Ambassadors have also begun a painstaking and people-driven environmental door-to-door campaign around the wetland alongside the SKD Boulevard and adjacent communities to help save the wetlands from harmful human activities.
They have designed eleven zero budget and voluntary community-based action project to be implemented in the course of this year.
17-years-old Rose Keita and a team of seven Young Environmental Justice Ambassadors have developed a follow-on project titled “Save Our Wetlands” intended to inform, inspire, and involve young people as well as people of all ages and gender to protect the wetlands.
“We are going to motivate and mobilize people to understand the importance of wetlands to the ecosystem utilizing community-based wetlands trash initiatives, small scale mangrove restoration activities, and lead a Wetland Saturday Action Team (W-SAT)” the passionate Young Environmental Justice Ambassador noted.
For Young Environmental Justice Ambassador Dennis Burton and his team, the quest to safeguard the wetlands and mangroves go beyond Montserrado County. They have planned to visit Lake Piso in Grand Cape Mount County to conduct two Trash Clean-up Day around the Robertsport end of Lake Piso.
“In addition to the two Trash Clean-up Day, we have also planned to organize the first Young Leaders Wetlands Summit in Robertsport City and its immediate suburbs so as to educate young people about the immense economic benefits of clean wetlands and other practical grassroots steps to safeguard the environment,” Burton indicated.