A fresh report released by the environmental
watchdog Global Witness indicates that illegal logging in Liberia is posing
greater threat to the country's forest.
The Global Witness' report, which states that
illegal logging is robbing several people in Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon and the
Democratic Republic of Congo, substantiates the group's earlier report stating
that last year in Liberia, "private use permits" were issued on a
massive scale, allowing logging companies to claim more than 40 percent of the
country's forests during a two-year period.
However, Global Witness' team leader for forest
sector transparency, David Young, says, although the proportional scale of the
problem was biggest in Liberia, the permits also pose a grave threat to Ghana,
Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to young, the area involved proportionately
in Liberia is much greater than in the other countries, so it was a much
greater threat to Liberia's forests. But the systemic nature of them in the
other countries, if not controlled, could lead to similar destruction.
Howbeit, the Global Witness' team leader for forest
sector transparency added, "The good news in Liberia is that the president
issued an executive decree in early 2013 to completely close down the private
use permits, and she has promised criminal investigations and prosecutions
where necessary. But that was back in January. We're now in May and we haven't
seen much progress in that investigation and those prosecutions."
The new Global Witness report says logging firms
are secretly given permits for land while many communities in Liberia and the
other countries named in the report struggle for timber, adding that high core
conspiracy between political leaders, civil servants and various logging
companies is systematically robbing thousands of citizens of Liberia and the
other countries of their livelihoods.
According to Global Witness, networks of political
elites, forestry officials and logging companies are using small-scale permits
to circumvent regulations in West and Central Africa, stating in its recently
released report that "shadow permits" which were originally intended
for small enterprises and community forests, have been co-opted for commercial
purposes through corrupt means
.
Global Witness in its report intoned that
"shadow permits" put the European Union (EU) and the United States
(US) at risk of importing illegal timber, thereby urging both the EU and The US
to consider any timber logged under "shadow permits" to be high risk
and potentially illegal.
No comments:
Post a Comment