MONROVIA – The Forestry Development Authority and the United Nations Development Program have officially launched the “Let’s Go Green” Project, funded by the EU, aimed at creating job opportunities for forest users.

By Fatu Kamara, contributing writer

The project was launched on Wednesday, May 15, 2024. The specific objective of the project is to strengthen the sustainable use of natural resources in Liberia while contributing to the fight against climate change. It is also to increase jobs and growth for forest communities in the Grebo-Krahn National Park and Gola Forest National Park and lastly, to enhance access to forest revenue and livelihood opportunities for improved forestry and conservation activities.

Louis Kuukpen, Resident Representative of UNDP noted that EU investments will contribute to building capacities, introducing alternative livelihood opportunities, and promoting participatory biodiversity conservation, environmental sustainability, peace, and gender equality as well as women empowerment in the regions. “I am glad that we can forge a greater partnership to support the forest communities of Liberia under the leadership of the FDA. This reflects our shared agenda for enhancing access to income and livelihoods for the growth and prosperity of forest communities in Liberia through the support of the EU.”

Speaking at the launch, EU Ambassador Nona Deprez reiterated that the EU and all member states are committed to supporting forest and biodiversity conservation in Liberia. She said the EU’s interventions are in line with the EU’s global strategies and international conventions and it is not just the EU, but it is also in line with Liberia’s policies, regulatory framework, and international obligations. “We as a global community have truly reached dramatic levels of forest and biodiversity loss and the consequences it has on climate change, people’s wellbeing, and the economy. And Liberia is not an exception”.  “We are the people who can do something now as nobody else will do it on our behalf, we have a shared responsibility to sustainably manage this unique and beautiful natural heritage so “Leh Go Green” together- Ambassador Nona Deprez

Rudolph J. Merab, Managing Director of the FDA highlighted the need for bold actions to positively transform the lives of forest dwellers for conservation to be successful in Liberia. “Liberia has what it has because Liberia has practiced sustainable forest management and if it didn’t, Liberia would not have the kind of forest cover it has now.” While lauding the efforts of the EU and other partners, he added that to maintain sustainable forest management, significant investments are needed to help protect the rich forests and biodiversity of Liberia. The FDA Managing Director used the occasion to pledge his unwavering support to implement the LEHGOGREEN project to realize the project outcomes.”

Liberia’s forest resources face several challenges and threats which are causing considerable damage to the integrity of the ecosystem and the provision of essential ecosystem services including soil quality, forest cover and forest health, water quality and plants and animals.

The goal of the project is to improve natural resources governance and business environment for sustainable forest-based activities in line with the 2020-2024 EU Programming forestry and conservation contribution to the Team Europe Initiative’s ‘Sustainable Forestry and Biodiversity Conservation in Liberia’.

The project is also being locally launched in Grand Gedeh and Grand Cape Mount counties.

Speaking during the local launch in Grand Gedeh County on Friday, the Town chief of Konobo Ziah Town, Joseph Cole lauded the EU, FDA and UNDP for the project but called for more support to forest communities. “We were able to make our plights known to the EU and they listened to us”, Cole says. “For this we are grateful”.

Other implementing partners include the Society for the Conservation of Nature, the Forestry Training Institute, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee and the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation.

KPANYAN DISTRICT, Sinoe County – In 2016, Numopoh Community Forest leased 7,220 hectares of forestland to Delta Timber Company.

By Emmanuel Sherman and James Harding Giahyue, with The DayLight  

Instead of the forest in Sinoe’s Kpanyan District, Delta harvested logs  in another area of the woodland, an investigation by an NGO found two years later. It abandoned logs in the forest and at the Ross Port of Greenville, Sinoe County. Then it failed to live up to the agreement with Numopoh.  

But all of this would not have happened had the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) disapproved the agreement. The involvement of Gabriel Doe, Delta’s owner, in the logging industry before and during Liberia’s bloody civil wars means he should not participate in forestry.  

Doe owned the Cavalla Timber Corporation, one of 17 logging companies that either supported militias, participated in or facilitated the war. An estimated 250,000 people died during the carnage and about a million were displaced.

“Logging revenue was unlawfully used by political elites and warring factions to fund armed conflict[s],” said the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). “Logging companies shipped or facilitated shipments of weapons and other military materials to warring factions.”

Cavalla had an affiliation with the notorious Oriental Timber Company (OTC), owned by convicted war criminal Guus Kowenhoven, who traded illegal Liberian timbers and supplied guns to then-President Charles Taylor.

In 2001, the United Nations imposed a travel ban and assets freeze on Doe, Taylor, Kowenhoven and more than 100 other individuals linked to the Taylor regime, which took over a decade to be lifted. Two years after the travel ban,  the United Nations sanctioned Liberian logs. The sanctions were intended to break the connection between the individuals and Liberia’s natural resources, and arms smuggling, the UN said at the time.  

Following a rigorous reform process, the UN lifted the sanctions on Liberian timber in 2006. The Liberian government canceled the contracts of Cavalla and other companies over irregularities as part of the reform.  

But to prevent future “blood timber,” “conflict timber” or “logs of war,” the reform agenda partially debars wartime loggers from the ravaged industry. It empowered local communities to enter into contracts and benefit from their forests.  

An Illegal Re-entry

Apparently inspired by Cavalla, his old company, Doe established Delta in 2012. He holds 60 percent of Delta’s shares, with the rest outstanding, according to its article of incorporation.

Doe did not only have a relationship with former President Charles Taylor. He might have also allied with former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who led the country when Delta was established.  In her 2009 memoir, This Child Will Be Great, Mrs. Sirleaf claimed she secretly boarded Doe’s airplane to escape from late President Samuel K. Doe (No relation to Gabriel Doe). Gabriel Doe denies that story. 

With his paperwork in hand, Gabriel Doe headed to Sinoe’s Kpanyan District, a region in which he had worked many years ago. He had begun his logging career in Nimba in the early 1970s with another company, he told The DayLight in an interview in Monrovia. Cavalla had also worked in the southeastern region in the 1980s up to the early 2000s.    

Villagers knew Doe’s past but he assured them it was a new beginning, Sam Kainde, the head of Numopoh’s leadership, told The DayLight.

“He told our people at this time that there is [National Forestry Reform Law] and [Community Rights Law of 2009 with Respect to Forest Land] that [are] going to [protect] the community so, what they used to do had passed,” Kainde said. “Our people grasped it in their minds.”   

But it was the beginning of the community’s postwar nightmare.

In December 2018, just two years into the agreement,  Volunteer to Support International Effort Developing Africa (VOSIEDA), an NGO, found the company harvested 500 logs outside its contract area.  VOSIEDA’s report referenced an investigation by Global Witness in 2017, which captured the illegal felling and other accusations.

The FDA did not punish the company. Per the Regulation on Confiscated Logs, Timber and Timber Products, the FDA should have obtained a search warrant, confiscated the logs in question and auctioned them. It should have fined Delta two times the official price of the logs, a six-month prison term or both, according to the regulation. The FDA did not respond to The DayLight’s queries for this story.

Delta paid Numopoh just under US$1,000 for the illegal harvesting and US$4,963.75 for a one-year land rental fee, according to a receipt of the payment. It owes nearly US$20,000 in land rental and harvesting fees, based on the receipt and the agreement.

Delta has also failed to complete a school, establish a sawmill, and erect a clinic. It has not funded Numopoh’s scholarship program in line with the agreement.

In fact, in all, Delta has only paved a 26-kilometer dirt road.

Delta is one of the most dormant, failing to renew its business registration since June 2021, records at the Liberia Business Registry show.

Delta has abandoned nearly all of the logs it harvested, another violation. Between 2018 and 2021, it produced 1,624.521 cubic meters of logs. However, it only managed to export 237.178 cubic meters or just 41 logs, according to the LEITI, citing company and FDA figures. Some of the logs have rotted at the Port of Greenville, others are scattered in the Numopoh forest.

Doe wrongly claims that the logs are not abandoned.

“They were not abandoned,” Doe told The DayLight. “If you decide to operate in the port, you request for an area and you stockpile the logs until the vessel comes in.”

Doe’s claims are not backed by facts. Under the Regulation on Abandoned Logs, Timber and Timber Products, logs cannot stay more than one-and-a-half months at a port. The regulation came a year after the Numopoh-Delta agreement to curtail the waste of timber but has not been enforced.

Numopoh and DELTA might have acted illegally by signing an agreement. However, the FDA broke its own law by approving it. The Regulation on Bidder Qualifications requires the FDA to disqualify businesspeople connected to the logging industry before 2006 unless they fully and honestly confess their deeds to the TRC.

Doe claims he received a certificate from the TRC after he appeared. “If I didn’t comply, [the] FDA would not have permitted me to do logging…,” Doe told The DayLight.     

Proving or disproving Doe’s appearance is difficult, as he is not mentioned in the TRC report and most of the commission’s archives remain sealed until 2029. However, journalists who covered the commission and former commissioners, communication staffers and data clerks deny Doe’s claim.

But appearing before the TRC is not the only condition for wartime loggers to participate in forestry today. The qualification regulation requires wartime loggers to restitute funds that the government lost as a result of their illegalities. Interestingly, they must pledge they would not repeat their illegal dealings. There is no record that Doe did so.

The TRC aside, the FDA has illegally approved a number of contracts for companies whose owners are ineligible. For instance, it approved a contract for a company owned by Deputy Foreign Minister Comfort Thelma Duncan Sawyer, one owned by a rogue company owner and another by the then-Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Cllr. Cooper Kruah.

Harrison Karnwea, the Managing Director of the FDA at the time—who approved DELTA’s contract— did not say whether or not Doe appeared before the TRC. Rather, he justified having approved the wartime logger’s contract.

Karnwea suggested he could not be held responsible for the Delta situation. He claims that the FDA is not required by law to have a list of debarred people and companies and that the FDA only witnesses contracts. “The communities award their contracts to somebody and take the person to the FDA for the FDA to witness the agreement and acknowledge it,” said Karnwea, the current chairman of the agency’s board of directors.

“There is no such thing as [a] debarment list,” he added.   

Karnwea’s claims are not based on the facts. The qualification regulation mandates the FDA to keep a list of debarred persons in addition to a list the Public Procurement and Concession Committee (PPCC) should make.

The National Forestry Reform Law requires the FDA to make sure that companies generally meet the threshold to conduct logging in Libera. Issues include individuals’ financial and technical capabilities, human rights and criminal records, integrity and government affiliation.

Contrary to Karnwea’s claim, the FDA does not witness community forest contracts. It approves—and can disapprove—them, based on the qualification regulation.  

Karnwea’s apparent excuse that it was not his responsibility to prequalify companies does not hold. “The Managing Director shall be professionally qualified in forestry, the act that established the FDA says. “He shall be responsible for the conduct of the general operation of the Authority…”  

Termination

Following those years of rigmarole, Numopoh is seeking an end to the contract with Delta. Kainde accuses Doe, who has been away in the Ivory Coast, of holding the forest hostage.

“Given the fact that the agreement has ended and the company has failed to fulfill its financial obligations, the community has decided that it will not renew its agreement with Delta,” Kainde wrote to the FDA in July. “The FDA should therefore not engage in any dealing with Delta regarding the Numopoh [agreement].”  

The community’s action is not lawful. To end their relationship with Delta, locals will have to go through an arbitration process, according to the agreement. The arbitration panel comprises three persons, one each from the disputed parties and a third from the FDA.  

Doe wants to continue with the agreement despite being indebted to the community.

Kainde told The DayLight Numopoh already engaged an attorney.

“We will seek legal advice for the way forward if FDA does not give us the authorization,” said Kainde.  

 [Konwroh Wesseh contributed to this story]

The story was a production of the Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists of Liberia (CoFEJ).  It was originally published by The DayLight and has been republished her by permission.

MONROVIA – The Forestry Development Authority (FDA) says it has uncovered chains of clandestine and unwholesome acts of illegal harvesting and processing of logs around the country, especially in Nimba County and western Liberia.

It can be recalled that earlier in August 2023, the FDA rangers intercepted four container trucks conveying illegal wood to the Freeport of Monrovia. During the last month, two trucks bringing semi-processed timber, locally referred to as “Kpacolo,” was intercepted in Nimba County with the alleged perpetrators on the run.

According to the FDA in a release issued in Monrovia, it intercepted two container trucks conveying Kpacolo from western Liberia to the Freeport of Monrovia for export. In the wake of these chains of illegal activities, the FDA says it has informed state securities, including the Liberian National Police, of these troubling developments and is increasing its collaboration with justice actors to swiftly investigate these illegal acts to deter all those bent on perpetrating these acts.

The FDA alarmed that there continues to be the incidence of illicit logging perpetrated by Liberians and foreigners, including a Chinese National accused of being associated with the incident in Nimba.

In the latest incidence, two trucks with forty-foot containers bearing illegally harvested wood were intercepted on October 24, 2022, by FDA Officers while entering the premises of the Freeport of Monrovia. The drivers of the trucks identified as Musa Kamara and Mobutu Sackor confessed through a preliminary investigation of smuggling the containers with illegally harvested logs for an unknown person whose name is yet to be disclosed. 

“The FDA hereby informs the public that all those interested in commercial forestry activities must be permitted by the proper authorities at the entity consistent with the requirements of the National Forestry Reform Law and the Community Rights Law of Liberia,” the statement said.

The FDA warned, “Any one engaged in commercial activities outside of this framework will experience the full weight of the Law. Our rangers and forest law enforcement officers will remain robust in handling violations.”

The FDA also informs trucking business owners and the Port Trucker Association to refrain from conveying forest products to the Ports or other destinations without a valid export permit or forest waybills evidencing the legality of the wood. According to the forest management body, doing so may result in forfeiture of the trucks under Section 20.2 of the National Forestry Reform Law.

It called on the public to communicate any strange movement of harvesting of logs to its regional foresters, forest rangers, or the nearest national security personnel to report the incidence of illegal harvesting or transporting of logs.

Meanwhile, FDA Managing Director C. Mike Doryen, who is attending a climate change summit out of the country, has described the move by the forest officers as timely and commendable and mandated that the forest officers increase collaboration with national security actors in combatting illegal activities.