IPNEWS: The authoritative Independent Probe Newspaper understand that last week’s signing by wartime logger Rudolph Merab to export of 797 logs, valued at an estimated US$923,441, despite being aware that over half of the timber had been illegally harvested, has sparked serious international discontent with the EU and other countries threatening to impose new restrictions on Liberia.
In early February 2024, Liberia’s president, Joseph Boakai, appointed a timber trader linked to illegal logging to head the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) responsible for the country’s forests. Rudolph Merab, a longtime ally of Boakai’s, was tapped to lead the Forestry Development Authority, prompting alarm from environmental advocates in Liberia, who say Merab lacks the required qualifications for the job and is likely to prioritize timber extraction over conservation or community forestry.
“He has been very critical of community participation in forest management,” said Jonathan Yiah, forest governance expert at Liberia’s Sustainable Development Institute. “More generally, he’s against the idea that communities should participate or give out concessions to logging companies, or even to manage forests.”
Merab replaces former FDA boss Mike Doryen, whose tenure was marred by allegation of corruption and lawbreaking. Appointed by soccer star-turned-president George Weah, who was defeated by Boakai last October, Doryen ran the forestry agency from 2018-2023.
In a leaked 2022 memo, the U.K. Foreign Office said that post-war regulations meant to protect Liberia’s rainforests and combat illegal logging virtually collapsed under Doryen. The memo described a “parallel system” for timber exports that bypassed legality checks and included the use of off-the-books accounts. In one widely publicized case, the FDA issued an export permit for millions of dollars’ worth of illegal logs, overriding the recommendations of a report from the country’s Department of Justice that accused Doryen and his staff of “serious breaches of Liberian law.”
“Generally speaking, the Weah period is seen by almost everybody as a complete disaster,” said Saskia Ozinga, a forest governance researcher and environmental advocate with more than a decade of experience advising Liberian policymakers. “Nobody ever said anything positive to me about the whole period, and there was a strong consensus that it had to completely change.”
Addressing corruption in Weah’s administration, in power from January 2018 until January 2024, was a centerpiece of Boakai’s campaign. Since taking office, he has initiated audits of some key government agencies. So far, though, the FDA hasn’t been included.
Advocates say Merab’s appointment may also violate a statute that requires the agency’s managing director to have a background in forest management.
“The issue is that whoever leads the forestry sector should be someone with vast experience and expertise, and not just on logging,” said Andrew Zeleman, facilitator for the National Union of Community Forestry Development Committees.
This week, The Forestry Development Authority (FDA) approved the export of 797 logs, valued at an estimated US$923,441, despite being aware that over half of the timber had been illegally harvested. The illegal shipment was one of the first acts of Managing Director Rudolph Merab— a serial logging offender—since he became the unlikely head of the forestry regulator.
The export permit and a National Port Authority reconciliation report show that West Water Group (Liberia) Inc., which operates in Grand Bassa and Nimba Counties, owns the shipment. Merab had approved the export barely two weeks after his appointment in February, according to the permit.
The 4,702.679 cubic meters of logs were loaded onto M/V Tropical Star, a ship flying under the Malaysian flag. The vessel departed the Port of Buchanan on March 16 bound for China. Marine Traffic, which provides information on the movement of ships, reports that the ship is due in from China on May 16. Wenzhou Timber Group Co. Ltd, the Chinese state-owned firm that deals in timber and other trades, bought the consignment, according to the permit.
But an analysis of the consignment FDA’s computer system generated by, obtained by The DayLight, identified 401 logs, or 50.3 percent of the consignment as illegal logs. The LiberTrace system tracks logs from their origin to their final destination. Programmed automatically to flag noncompliance, it is a crucial part of forestry reform following years of corruption and mismanagement. SGS, a Swiss verification firm, created LiberTrace in 2014 and turned it over to the FDA five years later.
A document from the FDA’s legality verification department (LVD) provides a peep into how Merab approved the export. It reveals Gertrude Nyaley, the Deputy Managing Director for Operations, who headed LVD at the time, endorsed the export.
“[Managing Director Merab], please approve [West Water’s export permit] as per the analysis and payment made,” Nyaley wrote to Merab.
Nyaley appeared to have skipped the red flags LiberTrace raised. “Out of the 797 logs, 50 percent are traceable with red label because of diameter [issues]. Two percent is also traceable relating to species. And 48 percent over tolerance,” Nyaley added.
On the contrary, the analysis shows that the FDA had not authorized the harvest of some of the logs. Others were either immature, originated from different sources or had other issues, violating several forestry statutes.
‘Vulnerable’
The FDA had not approved the harvesting of 180 of the 401 problematic logs, according to the Liber Trace analysis.
Of that 180, 160 logs were ekki wood (Lophira alata) that did not meet the legal diameter ekki wood I listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a UN-recognized body that promotes sustainable use of natural resources. The DayLight manually verified the permit that details each of the logs exported. Some even measured 60 centimeters, 20 centimeters less than the required dimension, known in forestry as the diameter cut limit.
Last week, EU threatened to imposed ban on Liberian farmers for their continued involvement in deforestation.
The EU said while, Farmers are clearing forests in Liberia to create cocoa plantations and are trafficking the beans into neighboring Ivory Coast, undermining European efforts to curb deforestation, research by a conservation group showed on Monday.
A law approved by the European Union and set to come into force at the end of this year aims to prevent agricultural commodities linked to deforestation around to world from entering the European market.
The regulation also covers products such as coffee, beef, and soy, but cocoa is seen as an early test of the law that requires companies to demonstrate their supply chains do not contribute to the destruction of forests.
As efforts have focused on tracing supply chains in leading cocoa exporting countries, Ivorian forest conservation group IDEF found that farmers from Ivory Coast are moving across the border into Liberia in search of land.
“It’s a flow that’s accelerating, and it will continue to accelerate,” Bakary Traore, IDEF’s executive director and the main author of the research, told Reuters.
Unless the exodus of cocoa farmers from Ivory Coast into Liberia is checked, it risks fueling a repeat of the widespread cocoa-driven clearances that have all but wiped out Ivorian forest cover, Traore said.
Long the world’s leading producer, Ivory Coast’s cocoa sector faces challenges, including climate change, ageing tree stocks and disease that risk sending production into long-term decline.
TRAFFICKED COCOA
In 2022 alone, Liberia lost around 150,000 hectares of natural forest, according to conservation organisation Global Forest Watch.
Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority told Reuters that it was aware of the influx of cocoa farmers from Ivory Coast over the last three years and was preparing to take action.
The Coffee and Cocoa Council – Ivory Coast’s cocoa regulatory body – and the European Commission did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
IDEF carried out its research over a period of six months in a group of villages that satellite images showed were a hot spot for deforestation in Liberia. But Traore said the phenomenon was commonplace along much of the border between the two West African nations.
IDEF found that migrant farmers began planting cocoa on land leased from Liberian villagers in 2018.
While some plantations are in the development phase, the researchers found others were already producing cocoa.
Despite company assertions that they are able to trace the origins of their supplies, that Liberian-grown cocoa is illegally trafficked back into Ivory Coast and mixed in with Ivorian supplies.
“The controls on the ground, in reality, are almost non-existent,” Traore said. “Without robust oversight, that cocoa will make it into the European market.” (courtesy of Reuters, Daylight and mongaby.com
