The Managing Director of the Forestry Development Authority;
The Chairman of the AFF Secretariat;
The ****** (fill in according to attendees);
Ladies and gentlemen, may I simply say ... "All protocols observed".
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Dr. Mary Molokwu-Odozi expresses her sincerest apologies for her unfortunate absence today due to
her very crowded schedule. I hope that my few words may suffice on both her behalf and for Fauna
& Flora International.
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My name is Carl Wahl, and I am currently serving as FFI's Project Manager for the Wonegizi REDD+ Pilot Project in Lofa County. Though I am relatively young as a West African, I am somewhat aged as a Southern African, having spent twelve years working mainly in the Republic of Zambia, but also in the Republic of Malawi and the Republic of Mozambique, respectively.
It is a privilege to stand before you and discuss the fundamental aspects of trees and forests in Liberia, a country recognized as the last bastion of West Africa's forests, specifically, the Western Guinean Lowland forest ecoregion which encompasses nearly 100% of the Liberian nation. And, although it it is repetitive to say it, Liberia, despite her relatively small size, contains nearly half of the forest in West Africa.
However, these facts are a poor representation of the awe-inspiring nature within the forests themselves. In the past eight months, I have had the privilege to periodically work with demarcation and carbon-assessment teams in and around the Wonegizi Proposed Protected Area. What I see on those trips are sights that are worthy of the same acclaim as the Redwood Forests in the United States, or the massive temperate rainforests of southeast Alaska where I worked as a US Forest Service Forest Ranger. In Wonegizi I have seen absolutely mindblowing profusions of trees of gargantuan proportions, with root buttresses spreading 10 to 15 meters across the forest floor, bearing up trunks of trees of more than a meter and a half in diameter stretching in height to 40 meters or more. Within these forest strongholds exists such a diversity of life, both known and unknown, that enumerating it would take far more than the short time alloted to me.
Unfortunately, this walls of this bastion of forests are slowly crumbling. In some cases it is the exportation from the forest of a local or international commodity, such as timber, precious minerals or bushmeat. In others, it is the crowding in of a growing population clearing forested land to grow crops to support their families. Though I may be struck down for saying this as a conservationist, I feel an sense of empathy with either case; both my grandfather and my great-grandfather were loggers who along with many other men at that time exploited the great pine forests of Northern and Upper Michigan in order to provide for their families, send their children to school, and in a small sense, contribute to the development of the American nation. In that sense, a Liberian family or the Liberian nation is no different from my ancestors in that they are capitalizing on the highest value forest resources to perpetuate and improve their families livelihoods.
What spurs this explotation? In simple terms, I would say that currently there is relatively little value for leaving the forest or the forest resources alone, or even for sustainable offtake of forest resources. Rather, a poor person looking for money to put clothes on their childrens' back, pay for their children's schoold fees, or to purchase seed rice to plant their fields, ends up being coerced by his or her poverty to exploit whatever available resources are at hand in order to meet those most pressing needs. When this poverty is multiplied across a village, a town, a clan, a district, a county, or a country, the forests literally suffer death from a thousand cuts.
I want to emphasize this fact: currently in Liberia, forests only yield monetary returns upon removal of a forest resource from the forest base. In a society that is increasingly joining the monetized global economy, there is almost no compelling reason for a citizen not to protect or sustain these resources.
This is the fundamental heart of the ideas underlying the principles of Payment for Ecosystems Services. Whether it be a conservation agreement with a protected area, or a national benefits sharing mechanism for monies received from the sale of carbon credits, PES represents a series of mechanisms whereby nations with extensive forest resources such as Liberia can commodify these services that we have heretofore taken for granted; provision of clean water, provision of clean air, stabilizing the soil and agricultural base, regulation of pest and disease outbreaks, and the like. In this specific workshop, the enumeration of Liberia's forest carbon stocks will no doubt be the primary focus of discussion. This is a critical first step in the long process of developing the national carbon market to the state at which Liberia governments, communities and individual citizens can actually see benefits from the act of positive management of forest resources as a viable alternative to unsustainable exploitation.
Payment for ecosystem services is still a new thing, not only in West Africa, but the world as whole. Therefore, I would like to urge the assembled attendees to approach this workshop with an attentive and open mindset so that we can make Liberia a pioneer of payment for ecosystems services to which the region and the Continent may look to as an example!
With that, I would like to thank the assembled participants, our facilitators from the African Forest Forum, our hosts from the Forestry Development Authority for allowing me to declare this workshop officially open.
