As 2030 approaches and only 17% of the sustainable development goals have been met, global experts are blaming the bad results on climate change. They say that the bad weather is preventing the world from the attainment of the long-ago designated outcome, not forgetting that this includes 95% of the global south countries.
By Togba-Nah Tipoteh
The Truth of the matter is that the powers that be are engaged in deforestation rather than reforestation. So, they use their representative, the Secretary General of the United Nations to call for yet another global assembly to place the blame on climate change for the failure to meet the goal that they set for the attainment of the sustainable development goals. Rich countries, like Saudi Arabia, are financing this charade. Even the renown global singer, Akon, has put the mess into song when he sings the song Blame It on Me.
But the powers that be are not taking the blame. Instead they continue to place the blame on climate change. And they go on creating the problem by engaging in deforestation rather than reforestation. In Liberia, the deforestation has not only led to the rampaging of communities by elephants who have lost their natural forest cover. Floods have overtaken communities to the point of killing people and even injuring many more people. Students continue to sit on the bare ground when their countries, like Liberia which has at least two hundred of the world’s best log species, continue to have most of the high-grade log species. Under such circumstance, it is impossible to have any useful education.
Without useful education, it is impossible to have economic growth with economic development. So, the longstanding and widespread poverty goes on, perpetuating business as usual. Most unfortunately, this poverty has become the pretext for violence. And this violence, at times, takes on the forms of coup d’etat and civil war. The 2022 study by Afrobarometer of Liberia shows that most of the people of Liberia have concluded that Liberia is headed in the wrong direction (Afrobarometer, 2022). This bad direction is clearly seen in the worsening poverty locally and globally (Thomas Piketty, Harvard University Press, 2022).
This worsening poverty can come to an end through the practice of good science over the practice of bad science. Good science raises awareness in ways that motivate people to work through the Rule of Law to transform the unfair prevailing electoral system into the fair enduring electoral system/ It is only through this transformation that persons with good records can get elected to bring in the system of Justice, the ingredient for Peace and Progress in Liberia and in any other country.
