–As scientists warn of “earth’s sixth mass extinction event underway
By Wremongar Joe, Contributing Writer
Liberians have for years witnessed the devastating effects of mining, logging, and agribusiness activities on their country’s natural resources including a swath of tropical rainforest that is among the most biodiverse places on the planet.
Liberia’s tropical rainforest is declining at a fast pace occasioned by huge mining activities in its western and southern regions.
Meanwhile, logging continues to accelerate deforestation – an obvious threat to the fight against climate change.
These reckless human activities that benefit only an elite few, not just benefited a few elites in the impoverished are also resulting into increased greenhouse Gas emissions, soil erosion and floods.
The Forestry Development Authority of Liberia wo ensure the sustainable management and conservation of the country’s forests and forest resources for the benefit of current and future generations, is struggling to strike a balance between commercial forestry and conservation forestry on one hand, and community and conservation forestry on the other.
It is against this backdrop that the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) – the country’s largest municipal authority decided to contribute to ongoing conservation efforts to as means of helping mitigate the damaging effects of massive deforestation.
Boxed in transparent, wooden stair cages, the Monrovia City Corporation has been planting 10,000 trees along the famous Tubman Boulevard; something that is being done for the first time in many years.
The burst of tree planting is part of a wider replantation campaign named “Keep Monrovia Clean and Green,” spearheaded by Mayor Jefferson Koijee. Thousands of Liberians across the country were invited to take part in the venture.
Though the MCC itself is yet to release a statement on the undertaking, several senior staff of the institution on Monday October 7, 2019 took to the airwaves in Monrovia to explain its importance.
Jerome Danguah, MCC’s Assistant Northern Solid Waste Manager tells a talk show on Prime FM: “Whether you plant trees around your home and property, in your community, or in our national forests, they help fight climate change. Through the natural process of photosynthesis, trees absorb CO2 and other pollutant particulates, then store the carbon and emit pure oxygen”.
He said the city government is engaged with the process top mitigate the impact of climate change but said he was shock to note that angry protesters would uproot the trees for “no substantive reason”.
Planting trees in cities, Danbuah intoned “can result in cooler temperatures and reduced air pollution for millions of urban residents”, as he urged citizens to help protect the trees being planted.
Citizens skeptical of MCC New Tree Plant Project
For years now, the Monrovia City Corporation has been grappling with solid waste management. The streets of Monrovia are often littered with stockpiles of garbage, making citizens to have little or no trust in the ability of the MCC to manage the capital city.
Consequently, the of the planting of 10,000 coconut trees has led to many living within the Tubman Boulevard vicinity to begin questioning how the city government intends to manage, sustain and protect the trees in the face of real-time financial constraints and a deeply troubled economy.
Many have even raised concerns over the “irregular, makeshift pattern”in which the trees are being planted along the Boulevard.
Monie Captan, former Minister of Foreign Affairs described the entire exercise as “misguided”.
“While it is commendable to beautify the Tubman Blvd with the planting of Palm Trees, it is misguided to place them under electricity lines”, he posted on Facebook. The MCC is yet to respond to these criticisms.
Liberia, a costal country is feeling the effects of climate crisis, with land degradation, soil erosion, deforestation, and recurrent increase in heat and flooding exacerbated by uncontrolled human aggressions against the environment.
While more than sixty percent of its agriculture population it has significantly resulted to the destruction of the country’s rich rainforest and biodiversity. Increased human activities have also rendered Liberia’s coastal belt vulnerable to massive sea erosion in the coastal city of Buchanan, and parts of Monrovia I slum communities like West Point, New Kru Town among others.
Not much has been seen from Liberia’s environmental Protection Agency which is underfunded and lack the capacity to implement programs that can advert climate change and global warming.
But in response to the MCC tree plant project, the Deputy Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Randolph Dougbayou, hailed the initiative as “a step towards the reduction of our carbon footprint and a fight against greenhouse gas emission”.
“Today Liberia is doing the same by planting 10,000 trees through the Monrovia City Corporation! This is a community-based adaption, a great step towards the reduction of our carbon footprint and a fight against greenhouse gas emission! Congratulations MCC”, posted Randolph Dougbayou.
At current, Ethiopia leads the way for planting more than 353 million trees in 12 hours on Monday July 29, 2019, which officials believe is a world record with a national tree planting campaign aimed at planting four billion trees during “the rainy season” – between May and October 2019 – according to the country’s Minister of Innovation and Technology- Getahun Mekuria.
Getahun Mekuria said a total of 353,633,660 tree seedlings had been planted in the East African Country.
We are at the beginning of an era of mass extinction, scientists warn
A “biological annihilation” of wildlife in recent decades means a sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is under way and is more severe than previously feared, according to research.
Scientists analyzed both common and rare species and found billions of regional or local populations have been lost. They blame human overpopulation, in places like Monrovia and over consumption for the crisis and warned that they threaten the survival of human civilization, with just a short window of time in which to act.
The study, published in the peer-review journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, eschews the normally sober tone of scientific papers and calls the massive loss of wildlife a “biological annihilation” that represents a “frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization”.
Prof Gerardo Ceballos, at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, who led the work, said: “The situation has become so bad it would not be ethical not to use strong language.”
Previous studies have shown species are becoming extinct at a significantly faster rate than millions of years before, but even so extinctions remain relatively rare giving the impression of a gradual loss of biodiversity. The new work instead takes a broader view, assessing many common species which are losing populations all over the world as their ranges shrink, but remain present elsewhere.
The scientists found that a third of the thousands of species losing populations are not currently considered endangered and that up to 50% of all individual animals have been lost in recent decades. Detailed data is available for land mammals, and almost half of these have lost 80% of their range in the last century. The scientists found billions of populations of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians have been lost all over the planet, leading them to say a sixth mass extinction has already progressed further than was thought.
Why Plant Trees?
Liberia has faced unprecedented embarrassment as a result of the infamous Private Use Permit (PUP) saga or the granting of certain rights to companies to for logging. It witnessed a substantial amount of the country’s precious forests given out illegally to logging companies by top government officials and community leaders, and is on the verge of resurfacing if government goes ahead with its plan to award logging rights to certain concessions, an environmental group recently warned.
The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a global environmental watchdog, says the PUP scandal might just be a tip of the iceberg in relation to the damage caused to the country’s forests if government does not reconsider its decision to save itself from the anger of climate change and global warming. It warned further that the country’s forests are under renewed threats from what it termed as Conversion Timber/Logging. Liberia’s forests and wildlife are again clearly under threat.
But of late, several top NGOs have been working to preserve the country’s rainforest, biodiversity and species. For example, Conservation Internationalhas entered into an agreement with the people of Zodua Clan to help preserve a large portion of forest in Grand Cape Mount County. This agreement, the townsmen and women are barred from hunting bush meat in exchange for cash and other pottery farming activities.
A recent study estimated that restoring the world’s lost forests could remove two thirds of all the planet-warming carbon that is in the atmosphere because human activity has further fueled the need for increased tree planting.
The study, carried out by researchers at Swiss university ETH Zurich, calculated that restoring degraded forests all over the world could capture about 205 billion tons of carbon in total. Global carbon emissions are around 10 billion tons per year.
The study indicates that a global investment of $3.2 billion throughout 245 of the world’s largest cities — that’s about $4 per resident — could reduce pollution-related mortalities by anywhere from 2.7 to 8.7 percent, saving up to 36,000 lives every year.
This level of investment could also reduce temperatures on the hottest days of the year for millions of people, save up to 48 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually and avoid up to 13 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.