DAKAR: Forty percent of Liberia’s forests have been sold off in secretive and often illegal contracts, Global Witness said Tuesday, just days after the country’s president announced a probe into the issuing of permits.
An investigation by Global Witness showed that in the past two years, a quarter of the west African nation’s landmass has been granted to logging companies, according to the report published Tuesday.
“The new logging contracts termed Private Use Permits now cover 40 percent of Liberia’s forests and almost half of Liberia’s best intact forests,” said the natural resource watchdog.
“They have given companies linked to notorious Malaysian logging giant Samling unparalleled access to some of Liberia’s most pristine forests.”
Samling and its subsidiaries have been involved in cases of illegal logging from Cambodia to Guyana to Papua New Guinea.
“Unless this crisis is tackled immediately, the country’s forests could suffer widespread devastation, leaving the people who depend upon them stranded and undoing the country’s fragile progress following the resource-fueled conflicts of 1989 to 2003.”
On Friday President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced an independent probe into the issuing of these permits, after suspending the managing director of the Forestry Development Authority, Moses Wogbeh.
Liberia forests sold off in secret logging contracts: report
