By Mabinty M. Kamara
The environmental advocacy group, Green Scenery, has blamed the government for the current state of environmental degradation in the country.
The organization, in a statement, called on the government to put a ban on logging to protect the country’s environment after recent reports of escalation of indiscriminate logging.
“The government’s encouragement of the trade in log has greatly exacerbated the country’s loss of forest cover and indeed biodiversity and has reduced Sierra Leone to a mere rhetoric country among signature states of the convention on biodiversity and other conventions such as the convention on International Trade in endangered species,” the campaign group said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
The statement added that government had consistently ignored its obligations to the extent that since 2010 Sierra Leone has continuously opened its customs and excise to the trade in logs despite opposition from environmental groups.
The current situation has left the country vulnerable to natural disasters, lamented Green Scenery.
“Sierra Leone has been ranked as the third most vulnerable nation after Bangladesh and Guinea Bissau to adverse effects of climate change. The vulnerable population has low capacity to adapt to climate change and the rural population will be the most affected because of their high dependence on rain-fed agriculture and natural resource-based livelihoods,” it said.
It added: “According to the science of climate change, these impacts are likely to continue to affect Sierra Leone in the future, despite the country being least responsible for the problem since Sierra Leone’s contribution to global emissions of greenhouse gases is negligible.”
Green Scenery further expressed worries over the spate of environmental degradation in recent years as a result of deforestation that has over the years been largely influenced by timber logging.
“We warn that the rate of deforestation far outweigh the abilities of our forest species to regrow or regenerate and if deliberate actions are not taking by the government to halt this malaise, then the country is being pre-programmed for risks that it may endure such as: aggravated desertification, climate change based disasters (wild fires intensive floods, shortages, excessive heat, poor agricultural performance, increased health risk due to increasing pathogens),” the statement added.
Risks associated to deforestation and climate change are a major concern all over the world.
Each year Sierra Leone goes through harsh weather conditions. For the last three years different parts of the country have been hit by flash floods due to torrential rains.
Much of the forest cover in the Western Area has also been eroded which partly led to the devastating mudslide in 2017, that claimed the lives of about 1000 people.
Government have talked about investing in programs like tree planting and other environmental conservation efforts. But the rate of destruction of the environment has been faster than the rate of rebuilding it.
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