Civil Conflict and the Environment
in the Upper Guinea Forests of West Africa

Timothy Bishop & Tommy Garnett

March, 2000

Biodiversity Support Program
Disasters and Biodiversity Project
Washington, DC

U.S. Agency For International Development

Table of Contents

Acronyms

Consultant Biographies

Executive Summary

Preface

Introduction

History of Civil Conflict in the Region

Impacts of Civil Conflict on the Environment in the Upper Guinea Forests

Impact of Population Displacement on the Environment

Impact of Funding Priorities on the Environment

Impact of Unsustainable Resource Extraction on the Environment

Conclusions

Recommendations for Further Action

Summary

References

Acknowledgments

About the Biodiversity Support Program

List of Figures

Figure 1. Map of Sierra Leone Population Displacement

Figure 2. Map of Liberia Population Displacement

Figure 3. Map of Sierra Leone Migration Dates

Figure 4. Map of Liberia Migration Dates

Figure 5. Map of Sierra Leone Resettlement

Figure 6. Map of Liberia Resettlement

Figure 7. Map of Sierra Leone Resource Extraction

Figure 8. Map of Liberia Resource Extraction

Acronyms

Consultant Biographies

Tommy Garnett is a Sierra Leonean and Director of the Environmental Foundation for Africa, an international environmental nongovernmental organization headquartered in London, with country programs in Sierra Leone and Liberia since 1996 and 1997, respectively. In 1991 Tommy initially founded the Environmental Foundation for Sierra Leone (ENFOSAL) as a registered charity in the United Kingdom, and in 1995 ENFOSAL was reregistered as the Environmental Foundation for Africa (EFA). Since 1992, Tommy has traveled extensively in West Africa studying the nature, extent, and causes of environmental problems in the subregion. These studies form the basis of EFA’s current work, which involves conducting environmental awareness and positive action programs in schools and communities in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Environmental Foundation for Africa
33C Warwick Square, London
England SW1V 2AQ

Liberia 231-226-755, Sierra Leone 232-22-232-347

tommygarnett@hotmail.com

enfoafrica@hotmail.com

Timothy Bishop is an independent consultant based in New York City. From 1994 to 1999, he worked with Catholic Relief Services in West Africa, most recently as Country Representative for their Liberia program. Previously Timothy worked for the U.S. State Department in the Cape Verde Islands and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin. In total, Timothy has seven and one-half years of experience in West Africa, four in emergency relief programs.

414 West 120^th Street, #307
New York, NY 10027
USA

htbishop@aol.com

Executive Summary

This report aims to catalyze action on the part of conservation, relief, development, donor, and government agencies to alleviate the negative impacts of civil conflict on West Africa’s environment. The countries we address are Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. Although there are many ways (both direct and indirect) in which the environment is affected by civil conflict, this report concentrates on the impact of population displacement, the impact of unsustainable resource extraction on the environment and the impact of funding priorities on the environment.

Conflict has affected these countries in many similar ways, but some impacts have been extremely different owing to the varying circumstances of each country. Guinea, for example has not been recently involved in civil conflict, but has been affected by the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone by receiving a huge influx of refugees during the last decade. In fact Guinea hosts the largest number of refugees in all of West Africa. Côte d’Ivoire has also provided refuge to a large number of displaced people from this region. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia on the other hand have been fraught with conflicts, which has resulted in a mass exodus of the population, as well as internally displaced people. These population displacements impact the environment in many ways, especially in terms of deforestation, reduced wildlife, water pollution and erosion. In some cases where people have left an area, the forests have a chance to regenerate and the forests do replenish, but in the long term and within the region as a whole the impacts have been negative.

As a result of the conflict, many agencies operating in the region view their work as emergency induced. Understandably, the mandate of most of these organizations is to prioritize human life and welfare above all other considerations. Donor attitudes support this view. Consequentially when agencies do undertake environmental activities, it is almost always after the period of intense emergency has passed. In light of the above, the dollar value of relief versus conservation work is skewed heavily in favor of the former. In fact program budgets of relief agencies often dwarf those of conservation agencies by a factor of ten or more. The percentage of funds within relief and development organizations apportioned to environmental work is also generally low. There is, however, a growing realization of the clear link between human welfare and the environment. Agencies are increasingly realizing the need to include environmental concerns in their planning and activities.

This report provides information on civil conflict in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire, through such data as population figures for refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs); the dates of settlement in their camps and urban centers; the corridors of movement from their current residences to their areas of return (though resettlement may not yet be foreseen); the areas of recent conflict as an indication of continued instability; and the locations of war-induced animal, plant, and mineral extraction within the region. It details the negative effects of civil conflict on the environment recorded to date. Finally, this report gives recommendations to all agencies working in the region of ways in which the negative impacts of civil conflict on the environment can be reduced. Recommendations cover the need for:

• Better understanding of environmental impacts of conflict, raising awareness of these impacts, and sharing of lessons learned

• Greater integration of environmental considerations into policy and practice of the relief sector and private sector

• Improved environmental policies, legislation, guidelines, and their enforcement

• Enhanced collaboration between the environment sector and the relief and development sectors, and greater collaboration among environmental organizations

• Greater contingency planning with respect to environmental issues before crisis occurs, to ensure as much preparedness as possible

• Support to environmental organizations to maintain a low-level presence during crisis, taking action as and when they can

• Increased funding for environmental activities during and after crisis, and for study of impacts

• Enhanced monitoring of environmental impacts and prevention and mitigation activities

Input of adequate resources to conserve or restore the environment and renewable natural resources is essential to improve the livelihoods of human populations in the region whether displaced or non-displaced, and promote long-term peace and stability through sustainable development. It is hoped that this report will stimulate the willingness of all organizations to mainstream environmental concerns into their activities in the future.

Preface

The immediate goal of this paper is to document what is known about the negative effects of civil conflict on the environment in West Africa, to examine what organizations are active in this field, and to make recommendations of how organizations can better work toward mitigating these negative impacts. This paper was also written with a larger goal, however: to provide information for use in a conservation priority-setting exercise for the Upper Guinea Forests Region.

The Upper Guinea Forests extend from Eastern Togo through Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Guinea to Southeastern Sierra Leone. This area is believed to be one of the most biologically important areas in the world owing to its high endemism of flora and fauna. In order to decide on conservation priority locations and actions for the region, Conservation International (CI) brought together 144 experts from 26 countries in Ghana in December 1999. This five-day workshop combined the knowledge of these experts to arrive at a consensus on regional conservation priorities for the Upper Guinea Forests. Many of the participants in this workshop were specialists on the fauna and flora in the region. However, recognizing that priorities cannot be set according to biological information alone, Conservation International also brought in experts who could contribute socioeconomic information to the process. This information was overlaid onto the biological information, to ensure that priorities were influenced by these factors as well as biological priorities.

The Biodiversity Support Program (BSP)—a consortium of World Wildlife Fund (WWF), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and World Resources Institute (WRI) and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)—contributed to this process by bringing together a group of experts in relief, development, planning and armed conflict. This group contributed to the priority-setting exercise by providing information on the effects of civil conflict on the environment in the region. The starting point for discussion for this "Civil Conflict Working Group" was this document.

In order to collect background research for this document, Senior Program Officer Rebecca Ham of the Biodiversity Support Program spent two weeks in Guinea and Liberia during March 1999, collecting information regarding conflict and the environment and making contact with relief, conservation, and development agencies active there. This was followed in late 1999 by consultants Timothy Bishop and Tommy Garnett’s three-week visit to West Africa, to further study the effects of conflict on the region’s environment through a review of existing literature, field work, and a survey of the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of relief and conservation institutions and personnel in the region. A total of 27 institutions and 24 individuals were interviewed (the number of institutions and individuals is not equal, as multiple staff were interviewed in one institution).

The first draft of this paper was written from October 13^th to November 8^th 1999. In the first days of the Ghana workshop, data and maps in the report were reviewed, verified, and updated based on the experience of the participants. Thereafter with the available data, the "Civil Conflict Working Group" pinpointed those geographic areas currently threatened by active conflict or by the residue of such conflict (namely refugee and Internally Displaced Persons—IDPs movements. This information was overlaid on the other working groups’ results to provide a more comprehensive map of the threats to the environment—and thereby the priority areas for conservation work—within the region. Finally, this paper and the civil conflict group’s work highlighted many gaps in knowledge of the negative effects of war on the environment. Indeed while presenting the known information about population displacement and the other environmental consequences of civil conflict, the working group emphasized the lack of detailed studies concerning the impact of civil conflict on West Africa’s environment.

As a consequence of the workshop, some information in this report was revised and rewritten in order to produce a more accurate, more collaborative, and more useful document, completed in March 2000. The document went through a review process and these comments were incorporated into this final version.

The authors would like to highlight that the information provided in this report covers the period up until March 2000. The situation is West Africa is rapidly changing, constantly evolving. Since March 2000, more fighting has occurred, some refugees have repatriated, others have fled to different countries. The authors also acknowledge that the report has not covered every project and organization working in this field in the region.

Introduction

It is widely held that civil conflict impacts negatively on the environment through the displacement and resettlement of human populations, the abuse of natural resources as a result of civil conflict, and the peculiar economies that both fund and fuel the war. Unfortunately for much of West Africa, civil conflict has occurred there with great regularity since the late 1980s. Indeed beginning with the civil war in Liberia in December 1989 and continuing through the Lomé peace settlement in Sierra Leone in mid-1999, civil strife and massive population movements have overwhelmed these two nations and engrossed their neighbors Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire for nearly a decade. The vast majority of the over one million Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees who fled across their borders did so within the Upper Guinea forest regions of Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire, an area that holds the largest reserves of tropical rainforest in West Africa and is one of the earth’s most diverse biological regions. As such, concurrent with the fighting, terror, mass migration that pushed these refugees from their homelands (in the process upsetting the environmental balance in their countries of origin), and their arrival and long-term (8 to 10 year) settlement in the Upper Guinea region has impacted adversely on this area’s fragile environment.

Causes include clearing of farmland and felling of trees for the construction of refugee camps, logging and mining to fund much of the Sierra Leonean and Liberian conflicts, and the rehabilitation of farmland accompanying the resettlement of refugee and IDP populations; as a result, the local environment, fauna and flora, water and land systems, even entire ecosystems can be affected. A tour of the Kat Kama refugee camp in 1999 in the Gueckedou prefecture of Guinea; a visit to the Waterloo internally displaced persons’ camp in 1997 in western Sierra Leone; a trip to the Buchanan displaced shelters in 1995 in Grand Bassa, Liberia; or a journey to the Tabou refugee center in 1993 in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire—they all indicate the impact of population displacement on the environment through the absence of trees, the trampling of fertile lands, and the pressures wrought on the ecosystem by population densities 5, 10, or even 20 times the norm.

The effects of the wars are seen outside the camps as well. They extend into the urban centers that informally host thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons. Such was the case with Freetown in 1999, where illicit timber cutting for shelters in the Western Area threatened the remaining trees on the peninsula and the Guma Valley nature reserve, a major watershed and the source of Freetown’s piped water. Equally, environmental effects of war are seen in areas far from cities, where refugees, IDPs, and even fighting can be observed. Indeed in territories abandoned during the war, while animal and plant life may flourish, the absence of local government and the presence of a weak national government may permit mining and logging at unsustainable levels, as diamonds, gold, rubber, and timber are extracted by unregistered and/or unregulated companies. Such practices may even be promoted in conflict by warlords eager for cash, who sell extraction rights to lands they only tenuously control or, by international standards, have no rights to at all.

Finally, war harms the natural environment directly by burning forests and grasslands to flush out enemy soldiers, increasing hunting of wildlife through the proliferation of weapons, and increasing the burden on non-agricultural food sources (bush meat and wild fruits) with the decline in agricultural production and breakdown in trading routes between towns and national capitals. While the extent to which civil conflict in West Africa has affected the environment of the region remains in dispute, and while the longevity of such effects has yet to be determined, there is little argument that civil conflict has and will continue to affect the environment of the region adversely.

The following sections review the existing literature on conflict and the environment in West Africa. Similarly, they review the current environmental practices of a number of relief and development agencies—international and national NGOs, United Nations agencies, donors, and host governments—in alleviating the negative effects of refugee and internally displaced populations on the environment.

History of Civil Conflict in the Region

The four countries highlighted in this paper—Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire—offer contrasting views of the history of conflict within the Upper Guinea forest region. Throughout the 1990s, Guinea has not been at war but, through the hosting of half a million Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees, has been dramatically affected by the conflicts in its neighboring countries. Sierra Leone has hosted thousands of Liberian refugees since 1990, suffered protracted violence since 1992, then sent 200,000 of its citizens north and east into Guinea, and in 1999 sent 100,000 more refugees into northern Liberia. All the while, Sierra Leone has hosted up to half a million internally displaced at changing locations throughout the country. Likewise Liberia, whose 1989 civil war arguably carried Sierra Leone into conflict, has been racked by refugees and IDPs. However, unlike Sierra Leone, Liberia is now largely at peace, with the exception of Lofa County and its northern borders with Guinea and Sierra Leone. It is this continuing insecurity that is responsible for the continued exile of over 100,000 Liberians in southeastern Guinea and northwestern Côte d’Ivoire, as well as for the population displacement in mid-1999—following repeated attacks on their camps—of 15,000 Sierra Leonean refugees from Lofa to Grand Cape Mount county. Finally, there is Côte d’Ivoire, like Guinea a receptor of refugee populations—in this case Liberians who fled the war early in the decade—but which since 1998 has seen significant repatriation of these populations back into Liberia.

Guinea

Unlike Sierra Leone and Liberia, Guinea did not see active fighting during the 1989 to the present period. Instead, it received Sierra Leonean and Liberian refugees fleeing the fighting in their countries. While Guinea has been accused on several occasions of harboring fighters and even arming the ULIMO-K faction that was active in Liberia between 1992 and 1996—and is said by some to remain active along Guinea’s border areas with northern Liberia—Guinea’s greatest contribution to the Sierra Leonean and Liberian civil wars has been the harboring of over half a million refugees. The effects of such hosting is discussed in detail below.

Sierra Leone

Since gaining independence from Britain in 1961, successive Sierra Leonean governments failed to create political harmony or economic prosperity, progressively undermining state infrastructure, social services, and educational standards. By the early 1990s, an increasing number of army personnel, civil servants, jobless graduates, and school dropouts sought economic opportunity in mining areas in the east and south of the country. Most became laborers in the small-scale diamond mining sector, while others joined Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front (NPFL) in neighboring Liberia. War reached Sierra Leone in early 1991, when rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), based in Liberia and reportedly with financial and logistical support from the NPFL, began incursions into the Kailahun District in Sierra Leone’s Eastern Province. Fighting was initially confined to roads, towns, and villages in the country’s east and south, where attacks on civilians were short-lived but resulted in the indiscriminate killing of children, elderly, and disabled, plus the looting of property and the forcible conscription of young men and women into rebel ranks. Thereafter as in Liberia, the Sierra Leone civil war provided an opportunity for unregulated economic activity, with diamond areas becoming focal points for rebel activity. These same areas drew government soldiers deployed to flush out rebels, politicians needing income to finance their activities, and foreign sponsors of mining, logging, and related enterprises who could exchange arms for diamonds.

In the face of widespread corruption and a national army divided along ethnic lines, President Joseph Momoh proved incapable of quelling the rebels. Thus in April 1992, a group of young army officers led by Valentine Strasser seized power in a dramatic but largely bloodless coup. Many Sierra Leoneans and political analysts welcomed Strasser and his National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), particularly when they announced their intention to end the war, revitalize the civil service, rehabilitate the country’s infrastructure, and facilitate multiparty elections. By mid-1993, the NPRC seemed on target with military victories in the south and east, had improved army morale through timely payment of salaries, and had improved financial ties with Western lending institutions. Success was short-lived, however, as several NPRC officers were implicated in scandals including diamond smuggling and as infighting split the high command. Some disgruntled officers began collaborating with the rebels, and in mid-1994 the RUF struck with a more powerful and disciplined force. Before long, and reportedly with military assistance from the NPFL, rebels once again were active in the south and east, attacking towns and villages on roads leading to Bo, Kenema, and Koidu. By early 1995, fighting reached the north and west of the country as Kambia, Port Loko, and Moyamba districts came under attack, the latter forcing the closure of the Sierra Rutile mining plant and further cutting government revenues. In the face of such losses, the NPRC engaged the security firm Executive Outcomes, which quickly gained control over much of the country. In January 1996, a National Consultative Conference scheduled elections but unsuccessfully invited the RUF to form a political party. The rebels responded with attacks in the east and south of the country and with the first large-scale amputation of civilian hands to prevent voting. Elections went ahead nonetheless in February and March, and Alhaji Ahmed Tejan Kabbah was named president in April.

Among his first acts, Kabbah initiated peace talks with the RUF in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire. By November, a settlement appeared near, though rebel activities continued and a third military force—the civil defense forces—entered the war. Known in the south as Kamajors and in the north as Capras, these forces quickly achieved military success in the north and south. Peace loomed again, but in May 1997 elements within the Sierra Leone army overthrew Kabbah in a violent coup and invited the RUF to Freetown to form a joint People’s Army. Thereafter rebels entered the city from the east as the United Nations, international aid agencies, and the Kabbah government fled out the west. Days of violence and looting racked the capital, at which time the international community and most Sierra Leoneans disavowed support for the coup’s Civil Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). In the following weeks and months, banks, civil service agencies, schools, and most businesses remained closed, with relief aid limited to emergency food distributions and medical care. Meanwhile in exile in Guinea, Kabbah enlisted the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to restore his government. Thus in February 1998, ECOMOG invaded Freetown, pushing the rebels out in the midst of further looting and violence. However AFRC leader Johnny Paul Koroma was not captured,¹ and neither were AFRC and RUF bases outside of the city. Thereafter, security outside Freetown remained as tense as ever, with AFRC and RUF personnel allied jointly against ECOMOG.

Kabbah returned to Freetown in March 1998, followed four months later by Foday Sankoh to stand trial for crimes against the state. Outside the capital, ECOMOG had some military success but could not capture diamond-rich Kono. By late 1998, the first of a series of planned executions was conducted, with Sankoh spared only to negotiate a peace. The AFRC and RUF responded by attacking Freetown in January 1999, and though in control of the city for only a few days, they burned hundreds of homes, raped and killed civilians, abducted women and children, and amputated hundreds of residents’ hands, arms, and legs. Thankfully the Lomé peace accord was signed in June 1999, bringing a measure of stability to the nation, along with blanket amnesty for former rebels and significant political power to the RUF and AFRC. At present, it remains to be seen whether Foday Sankoh and Johnny Paul Koroma, who chair the strategic resources and peace commissions respectively, will help rebuild a nation shattered by conflict. What is clear is that the rebels—both on the ground and through their representatives in government—firmly control the diamond fields in Kono and the agriculture-rich district of Kailahun. It is also evident that cordial relations between the AFRC and RUF may unravel, with infighting in the Northern Province halting relief operations twice in 1999.

Liberia

Charles Taylor’s NPFL invaded Nimba County in northern Liberia in December 1989, in a bid to overthrow then-president Samuel Doe. While suffering setbacks in his first days in-country—and while seen by Doe’s government as a sideline invasion—Taylor’s persistence and his reported financial backing from Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Libya brought him close to the capital Monrovia by mid-1990. However Taylor was not able to take the city, and by August with the arrival of ECOMOG, he was forced to sign a cease-fire. His control then extended over nearly all of Liberia, and his establishment of a Greater Liberian government based in Gbarnga, Bong County—with a separate ministerial structure and currency—divided the country into two political and economic zones. It also brought relative peace to most of the nation, with the return of international commerce and the resumption of significant economic activity, albeit reporting to one of the two governments in Monrovia or Gbarnga. This peace lasted until 1992, when first the military faction ULIMO (established by Liberian Krahn and Mandingo ethnic refugees) began sporadic attacks on Taylor’s positions in western Liberia, and second in October Taylor launched Operation Octopus, a fresh bid to take Monrovia. This latter assault effectively ended large-scale economic activity throughout the country, as ECOMOG responded with increased attacks on NPFL positions nationwide. Thereafter most recognized businesses departed—Firestone among them—and Liberia’s economy was placed in the hands of largely illicit traders and adventurers.

By late 1993, another military faction, the LPC, entered the battle, and by March 1994 ULIMO split into ULIMO-J and ULIMO-K (Krahn and Mandingo, respectively). Thereafter the country was racked by factional fighting, with repeated territorial advances and retreats. The result was the inability of any single faction or ECOMOG to maintain control over a significant part of the country, effectively a stalemate. The consequences for the Liberian population were of course worse, with an estimated one million fleeing the conflict for neighboring Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. Economically, the factional splits also ushered in a period of competing warlord economies, with small-scale illicit logging, mining, and other resource extraction funding arms and munitions purchases. Thereafter until the close of the war, "fighters control[ed] the production of civilians in many areas, and members of factions and the government enjoy[ed] the profits on resources directly as they earned and exported."² More fully, "Warlord pursuit of commerce [was] the critical variable in conflicts [in Liberia]. Strongmen used commerce to consolidate their political power within a coalition of interest among themselves, businesspeople, and local fighters."³

April 1996 marked the next low in Liberia’s civil war, as Taylor’s forces attacked those of ULIMO-K in Monrovia, despite his and the other warlords’ inclusion since late 1995 in a government of national unity (with ministerial control divided between the various factions). Massive looting of private and international relief properties wracked the city, with thousands of civilians under assault and tens of hundreds losing their homes, properties, and lives. Nonetheless—and partly in response to April 1996—international action was galvanized in late 1996, as the international community pushed for peace and disarmament among the competing fighters. Thus in early 1997, Taylor and the other warlords began implementation of the Abuja II peace agreement, with a logistically-enhanced ECOMOG managing the disarmament and demobilization of some 50,000 fighters nationwide. The peace held, and presidential elections in July 1997 brought Taylor to the presidency of Liberia.

Up to the present day, with the exception of northwest Liberia, peace has largely held. Hundreds of thousands⁴ of Liberian refugees and internally displaced have returned to Liberia and their former homes, from areas in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and a handful of other nations in West Africa. However, beginning in mid-1999, fresh fighting broke out along the Liberia-Guinea border in northern Lofa County, redisplacing several thousand Liberians and forcing up to 15,000 Sierra Leonean refugees sheltering there to move to camps further south in Liberia. Equally significant, while Liberia now maintains a single government in Monrovia and a single ministerial structure—as opposed to the characteristic divided government of much of the civil war—the economic gain attached to illicit or largely unsupervised resource extraction continues. Even though the Liberian civil war was labeled a warlord economy, the recent post-war period is characterized by equally abusive and environmentally-unsound economic activities.

Côte d’Ivoire

Like Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire has been largely a bystander in the Sierra Leone and Liberian civil wars. Without downplaying the reports of significant Ivorian (and Libyan and Burkinabe) financial and logistical support for Charles Taylor’s NPFL—its December 1989 incursion was launched from within Côte d’Ivoire—the nation has not seen active fighting throughout the period of Liberia’s civil war.⁵ Instead, like Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire has been a recipient of hundreds of thousands of Liberian civilians fleeing the eastern part of that country.

Impacts of Civil Conflict on the Environment in the Upper Guinea Forests

The impacts of civil conflict on the environment are multiple and complex. This report aims to consider three of main impacts observed in West Africa:

• The impact of population displacement on the environment

• The impact of funding priorities on the environment

• The impact of unsustainable resource extraction on the environment

Impact of Population Displacement on the Environment

While disagreement exists about the degree of impact of population displacement on the environment, most researchers agree that refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) negatively affect the environment through the increased use of local lands, water, plants, and animals. Such increased use arises as a consequence of the rising human population in areas of settlement, yet whether such use remains unsustainable over the long term—and whether refugee populations lack the knowledge and ability to exercise proper local resource management—remains debatable. What is agreed is that little research has been undertaken to detail the long-term negative impact of refugees and IDPs on their host environments.⁶ From a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)-funded environmental study in Guinea, "Although there exists today a very useful body of information on environmental impacts in refugee-hosting areas in Guinea, no truly comprehensive or scientific study has ever been carried out. The information available from a variety of studies, project documents, or related institutions is either superficial, erratic, exaggerated, or if none of the above, limited with regard to time, sector, or geographical area."⁷

Guinea

History of Population Displacement

Figures 1 through 6 provide a visual analysis of the forced movement of refugees into Guinea over the course of the past nine years. Specifically, the maps detail the current estimated refugee populations in Guinea by sous-préfecture, the approximate year of arrival of the majority of those refugees, and the estimated destinations (by district in Sierra Leone or by county in Liberia) and numbers of refugees and IDPs expected to resettle. It must be noted, of course, that given the current state of affairs in northern Liberia and northern and eastern Sierra Leone, the expected timeframe for resettlement remains uncertain.

Sources: (1) IDPs United Nations HACO Situation Report, 23 to 30 September 1999, (2) refugees in Sierra Leone UNHCR Regional Directorate for West and Central Africa, 1 July 1999, (3) refugees in Guinea UNHCR Guinea February 1999 assessment.

Figure 1. Map of Sierra Leone Population Displacement

This Figure shows the current caseloads of refugees and internally displaced persons in the region. Numbers reflect the most recent census of camp and non-camp populations, divided by country of current residence, camp, city, district, sous-préfecture, or préfecture.

Sources: (1) Refugees UNHCR Liberia, UNHCR Regional Directorate, (2) IDPs UN Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa

Figure 2. Map of Liberia Population Displacement

This Figure shows current caseloads of refugees and internally displaced persons in the region. Numbers reflect the most recent census of camp and non-camp populations, divided by country of current residence, camp, city, district, sous-préfecture, or préfecture.

Figure 3. Map of Sierra Leone Migration Dates

This Figure shows the dates of the most significant population displacement for each of the camps, cities, districts, sous-préfectures, or préfectures.

Figure 4. Map of Liberia Migration Dates

This Figure shows the dates of the most significant population displacement for each of the above camps, cities, districts, sous-préfectures, or préfectures.

Source: Refugees numbers United Nations HAXO Situation Report, 23 to 30 September 1999.

Figure 5. Map of Sierra Leone Resettlement

This Figure shows the expected areas for resettlement of current refugee and IDP populations.

Sources: (1) Refugees UNHCR Liberia, UNHCR Regional Directorate, (2) IDPs UN Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa

Figure 6. Map of Liberia resettlement

This Figure shows the expected areas for resettlement of current refugee and IDP populations.

According to UNHCR, Guinea currently hosts 489,397 Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees in nine prefectures, from west to east Forécariah, Faranah, Kissidougou, Gueckedou, Macenta, Yomou, Nzérékoré, Beyla, and Lola.⁸ Of these, Gueckedou holds the highest number with 22,083 Liberians and 269,460 Sierra Leoneans, or 291,543 in total.⁹ Guinea’s refugee caseload exceeds that of any other country in West Africa, nearly doubling all others combined. From the above totals, Gueckedou prefecture alone holds 60 percent of Guinea’s total. Examined in relation to the country’s resident population, the refugee totals are staggering. According to Republic of Guinea data, the refugee population in these nine prefectures accounts for 35 percent of the total population,¹⁰ reaching 82 percent in Gueckedou, 58 percent in Yomou, 48 percent in Macenta, and 29 percent in Forécariah.¹¹ In at least one village in Gueckedou prefecture, Fangamadou, the 1996 refugee population equaled 45,000 against an indigenous population of 5,000, a 900 percent increase.¹²

Despite these refugee numbers, it must be noted that in the case of Guinea, both the Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugee populations were quickly accepted into their host Guinean communities and, until late 1999, remained distributed over a large area (hence the nine prefectures indicated above). As highlighted by the Guinean government, the first Liberian refugees in 1989 received no international assistance during their initial six months in Guinea, relying instead on host communities for their sustenance.¹³ In such instances, "the use of local natural resources has certainly not become a ‘free-for-all.’ Strict rules were set by the receiving communities, and in general the use of land and vegetation (private woodlots, oil palms) by refugees occur[red] against payment in cash or in kind (mostly labor)."¹⁴ In light of this reception, it is plausible that the dispersed nature of the refugee populations in Guinea slowed the process of environmental degradation. As support, one finding from a June 1999 UNHCR environmental study argues for "a more dispersed refugee relocation and smaller camps."¹⁵ The discussion on Côte d’Ivoire below provides further confirmation.

Yet despite its own study, the UNHCR suboffice in Gueckedou at the time of writing was relocating tens of thousands of refugees from border areas to large reception camps further inside Guinea. This was in spite of the agency’s assertion that "present identification and planning processes seem to go altogether against the core of UNHCR’s environmental policy."¹⁶ More strongly stated, "It has become clear to the mission, after discussion with UNHCR staff, technical government officers, local authorities, and—not in the least—local hosting communities, that the site identification and planning processes take place without sufficient environmental consideration." In short, the relocation exercise highlights the difficulty in matching UNHCR’s environmental policy with its protection mandate, as the refugee relocations proceeded in large part because of pressure from the U.S. State Department, the European Union, and UNHCR’s own mandate to protect the refugees from potential cross-border raids from Sierra Leone and Liberia. While it was recognized that the relocations might reduce refugee access to agricultural land and increase dependency on food aid, the camp relocations would improve access to and identification of refugees. In this instance, environmental protection and refugee security became a trade-off.

Effects of population displacement on the environment

Despite disagreement as to magnitude, it is clear that the massive refugee populations that fled to Guinea in the 1990s have impacted on the environment there. These impacts, listed below, center on the carrying capacity of natural resources to sustain both host and refugee populations. Such impacts include the following:¹⁷

• Shortened fallow periods within a continuing traditional system of shifting cultivation are leading to a reduction of soil fertility

• Increased exposure of the land to sun-, wind-, and water-related erosion is resulting in physical degradation of the top soil

• A decrease in the number of trees

• A decline in the abundance of certain tree species, such as timber trees, oil palm, raffia, rattan

• Disturbed natural water systems—such as sources, streams, and rivers—leading (during the dry season) to the drying up of these systems or occasionally (during the rainy season) to flooding of surrounding areas

• Water pollution

• A decline in agricultural production

• A decrease in the total land surface available for farming

• A decrease in the quantity of wood available for building and domestic energy

• A decline in the availability of ingredients for natural medicines and traditional domestic products

• Transfer of skills for swampland development and cultivation from refugee to host populations

• Import of improved plant materials from Sierra Leone and Liberia into Guinea (e.g., better pineapple variety)

• Transfer of skills in plantation management (coffee, cocoa, and palm trees) from refugee to host populations and vice versa

• Transfer of entrepreneurial skills from refugee to host populations

It is possible that these improvements in farming techniques and alternative skills may result in a decreased pressure on the environment, but this is not certain.

One must be careful in apportioning responsibility for specific environmental impacts solely to refugees. It must also be recognized that civil conflict in an adjoining country, and population displacement across border areas, create an atmosphere of urgency and opportunity for governments, relief agencies, and businesses alike. Thus while it is often expedient to blame environmental degradation on the refugees’ arrival in Guinea, the truth may partly lie elsewhere. For example, in interviews conducted in Gueckedou, varying degrees of blame were put on the refugees for deforestation and land degradation, from full to none.¹⁸ Prior to the arrival of large numbers of refugees in the mid-1990s, Guinea’s tropical forests had reportedly dwindled from an estimated 183,000 square kilometers in 1900 to only 4,482 square kilometers in 1991,¹⁹ exonerating the refugees from much blame for deforestation. Additionally, in areas of Guinea inundated with refugees, host Guinean populations have increased, further adding to environmental pressure. Finally, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach argue that historical analysis of reduced forest cover in Guinea is inaccurate and that, in the case of Kissidougou prefecture, "far from undergoing progressive diminuation, woody cover on the upland slopes and plateaus between the forest islands has generally increased during this century."²⁰ Yet several projects currently underway to mitigate the negative impacts of the refugees on the Guinea environment center their activities on reforestation. While such activities should be encouraged, it is naïve to expect that reforestation of 1,200 hectares of forest, as noted by Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) above, might redo what 91 years of economic exploitation arguably undid.

Organizations active in mitigating impacts of population displacements on the environment

Organizations active in the southeast of Guinea include the European Commission (EC), the Projet de Gestion des Ressources Forestières (PROGERFOR), and Guinée Ecologie. Specifically the EC works to repair environmental damage following the departure of refugees from camp sites (see the discussion on the Kat Kama refugee camp in the Gueckedou prefecture below), PROGERFOR receives funds from UNHCR for reforestation work in Ziama, Dieké, and Mont Bero, and Guinée Ecologie runs conservation education in schools, on the radio, and in workshops.

As for Gueckedou, nine years into the refugee crisis most environmental activities there are just beginning. Whether attributable to pressure from the Guinean government or the international community, refugee organizations in Guinea such as UNHCR and GTZ, and to a lesser degree USAID through its Health and Environment Protection Action (HEPA), are just now analyzing the impact of population displacement on the environment. In its own words, "As UNHCR [Geneva] has only recently initiated, as an element of its environmental policy, a well-prepared and focused training program for its own and operational partners’ field staff, [UNHCR] Guinea has not yet significantly benefited from the existing knowledge and experience available in this field."²¹ Environmental action from relief operations in Guinea has come into prominence only in the last few years, which though positive and welcome still questions how far the environment must degrade before people take notice. Clearly the trend is dependent on relief agency mandates, which in many organizations are only beginning to include environmental conservation. In any case, UNHCR in Guinea is by far the largest and most active agency undertaking environmental research. Equally their Guinea office has moved further toward environmental awareness and action than UNHCR offices in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire (see discussions below)—understandable given the disproportionately high number of refugees in Guinea.

Two environmental activities undertaken by UNHCR since 1992 include rehabilitation of cash crop plantations through the Direction Nationale des Forêts et de la Faune and construction and distribution of fuel-efficient metal stoves.²² Yet while both projects are welcome initiatives and have been copied by other agencies, they still have not achieved full success: "Tree species used for replanting are not necessarily those which are most demanded by the local population," and "after planting, there is insufficient care and maintenance; consequently plantations are open to damage from bush fires, white ants, uncontrolled grazing, unsustainable harvesting, etc."3²³ Similarly the improved stove project "has not been a great success. There seems to be very low use by households of these metal stoves."²⁴ Finally, as mentioned above, UNHCR is moving forward at significant financial cost with its plan to relocate Sierra Leonean refugees near the border to larger camps further inside Guinea, though "the costs involved to accompany a large camp with environmental mitigation measures and the consequent post-refugee rehabilitation charges will be many-fold the initial logistics investment for smaller camps which would be more integrated in the local Guinean communities."²⁵

Apart from UNHCR, a handful of other organizations are active in the Gueckedou area in the realm of environmental protection, four of the more prominent being the Guinean government’s Direction Nationale des Forêts et de la Faune (DNFF) and Direction Nationale des Eaux et Forêts (DNEF), GTZ, and USAID’s HEPA. As government bodies, the first two have general responsibility for managing the forest reserves and waterways. However, as a matter of course since the start of the refugee crisis, they have worked most closely with UNHCR on the projects mentioned above. As for GTZ, in early 1999 it completed a three-month reforestation project at the Kat Kama refugee camp in the Gueckedou prefecture, funded by the European Commission Host Organisation (ECHO), where several thousand trees were planted in an area previously occupied by UNHCR transit tents. Next, as part of its May 31, 1999 study of refugee impacts on the environment, GTZ will propose two environmental programs, namely restoration of the border areas of refugee centers and development of programs for the "conservation of biological diversity in the [refugee] reception areas."²⁶ At the time of writing, however, neither proposal had been drafted. HEPA is planning a US $30 million Expanded Natural Resource Management program for six prefectures in Guinea, three of which are in refugee areas (Kissidougou, Gueckedou, and Macenta). The focus will be on community-based forest management, improved agricultural productivity, promotion of micro-enterprises, and a favorable environmental policy in terms of land tenure and forest code.

One additional agency planning environmental activity in the Gueckedou prefecture is the newly created local NGO, Environnement et Développement—Action et Coopération (EDAC). Headed by a tropical agricultural engineer with many years of experience in sub-Saharan Africa (previously hired by GTZ for the Kat Kama reforestation project), EDAC is seeking funds for an 18-month reforestation and cash crop plantation project at Kat Kama, utilizing 14 varieties of trees and anticipating a total planting of 430,000 trees. Finally in Gueckedou are headquartered the international NGOs Concern Universal and Enfant Refugiés du Monde, plus the local NGO Community Action Against Deforestation (CAAD). The first two agencies have each partnered since about 1997 with CAAD on reforestation and improved stove projects in several refugee camps and bordering areas within the Gueckedou prefecture.

Sierra Leone

History of population displacement

As the arrival and settlement of Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea has been discussed above—and as that for refugees in Liberia will be discussed below—this section centers on the encampment and movement of Sierra Leone’s internally displaced persons, plus the relatively small number of Liberian refugees seeking refuge in the country. Figures 1 to 6 provide a visual analysis of the forced movement of Sierra Leonean IDPs within the country and of Liberian refugees in Freetown, Bo, and Kenema. Specifically Figures 1, 3, and 5 detail the current estimated IDP and refugee caseloads by location and number, by the approximate year of their arrival in their current locations, and finally by the district to which they are expected to resettle. As with Guinea, it must be noted that the current state of affairs in Sierra Leone and northern Liberia prohibits the resettlement of IDPs and refugees now in Sierra Leone. As such, the timeframe for their resettlement remains uncertain. In total, the latest United Nations reports cite 308,041 internally displaced in Sierra Leone, spread across over 90 locations in the four provinces and eight districts: Western Area, Bo, Pujehun, Tonkolili, Kenema, Port Loko, Bombali, and Kambia.²⁷ This number represents an increase of 68 percent over the August 1999 total of 183,077 IDPs, with Makeni town in the north recording the largest increase. Such numbers rise and fall on a regular basis according to scheduled camp registrations and verifications; nonetheless they highlight the continuing insecurity in much of the nation and in the north in particular. In fact, only a few days prior to the consultants’ stay in Sierra Leone, former RUF and AFRC soldiers clashed near Makeni, forcing the evacuation of several NGO and United Nations personnel.

As previously discussed, Sierra Leone first experienced displaced populations in 1991. The arrival of the RUF in Kailahun and Kono districts forced the retreat toward Kenema of thousands of internally displaced, while thousands of others left the country for neighboring Guinea in late 1991 and 1992. The latter moved east into the Kissidougou and Gueckedou prefectures of Guinea, resulting in the present high number of Sierra Leone refugees there. In similar fashion, as rebels advanced westward, civilians fled into the Southern province capital of Bo. By early 1995, IDP populations there—both in camps and the town—exceeded 250,000, while those in Kenema reached almost 200,000. Displaced persons’ camps in both towns recorded population sizes of 10,000 to 45,000 persons, the latter being the Gondama camp on the Sewa River, seven miles south of Bo. Meanwhile Freetown recorded an equally massive influx of displaced, though given the city’s greater absorptive capacity and the absence of reliable population verifications the following years, actual numbers were never known.²⁸ In 1995, with RUF advances north into Kambia, Port Loko, and Tonkolili, civilians retreated into the Forécariah prefecture in Guinea and Makeni town in Sierra Leone (where at least 15,000 IDPs from Kono district had settled as early as 1994). As with Kenema, Bo, and Freetown, IDPs in Makeni settled in camps and, in greater numbers, in the town itself, residing with friends and family. By the time a formal IDP verification was undertaken in Makeni and surrounding camps in May 1996, the displaced population there equaled nearly 150,000.²⁹

The May 1997 coup, followed by the February 1998 advance on Freetown by ECOMOG and the January 1999 rebel attacks on the city, affected the capital and the Western Area more than the rest of the country. While the six months prior to May 1997 saw over 75 percent of the Southern Province displaced caseload, over 50 percent of the Eastern Province caseload, and a smaller percentage of the Northern Province caseload resettle in Pujehun, Kenema, and even Kono districts³⁰—with several former IDP camps emptied, including Gondama near Bo³¹—the two coups exacerbated IDP problems in Freetown. Especially in February 1998, huge numbers of Freetown residents had their homes burned while outlying populations poured into the city seeking refuge from rebel advances. Total IDP populations increased dramatically over this period, with the construction of several new shelters or the expansion of existing ones. Such construction, plus the reconstruction of hundreds of homes burned in January 1999, put great pressure on the remaining timber reserves of the peninsula. It may be argued, though no studies have been conducted, that the Freetown attacks and the populations therein displaced negatively impacted on the environment on the peninsula more than any other population displacement within Sierra Leone. Indeed normal population pressures, coupled with increased pressures evident with large numbers of IDPs, likely encourage unsustainable use of the area’s natural resources. Finally it should be mentioned that during regular intervals throughout the Sierra Leone civil war, the Western Area peninsula was cut off from the remainder of the country, increasing the population’s reliance on a limited geographic area for cultivation, natural construction materials, and other resources.

Finally, there are several thousand Liberian refugees displaced into Sierra Leone. Indeed, while their presence has been important for political reasons, the registered number of refugees in Sierra Leone has paled in comparison to that of IDPs at all times over the last seven years. Early on in the Liberian conflict, some few thousand Liberians did cross the Mano River in western Liberia and settle first in Zimmi, then in Kenema. Eventually some of these persons made their way to Freetown, where there remains the last significant refugee settlement in the country. UNHCR estimates total refugee numbers at 9,900, divided between Freetown and Kenema.

Effects of population displacement on the environment

While UNHCR Guinea galvanizes interest in the effects of refugees on the environment there, no single relief agency in Sierra Leone manages all of the displaced populations (again much greater than the refugee populations). Instead IDP camp management as a policy is divided between a handful of international and national NGOs, depending on the location of the camp and services provided. For example, Médécins Sans Frontières provides medical services in IDP camps, though from 1995 to 1997 they directly managed the Splendid IDP camp in Bo. Similarly the Adventist Development and Relief Agency since 1996 has directly managed the Waterloo displaced camp in the Western Area, though they contract food distribution, medical, and construction services to other agencies. The reality is that in the case of IDPs throughout the region, and particularly in instances when the host governments lack the resources and therefore capacity to coordinate aid programs, such coordination is left to numerous UN and NGO relief agencies (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Activities as an example). Of course, when government coordination is evident, it may actually come not from sectoral ministries—health and agriculture as examples—but from planning ministries with wider mandates. Examples of planning agencies are the National Commission for Reconstruction, Resettlement, and Rehabilitation in Sierra Leone and the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs in Liberia.³²

Nonetheless, the Sierra Leone Adult Education Association, through its Ecological Promotion Programme, in 1999 prepared a proposal for environmental protection following the civil war. In that proposal, they presented a view of the negative impacts of the conflict on the nation’s environment:

The war has had adverse effects on the environment. Massive dislocation of both urban and rural populations occasioned by the ongoing rebel war continues to put considerable strain on the environment. In both rural and urban settlements, deforestation and other forms of environmental degradation arising from the construction of temporary displaced camps and makeshift settlements; indiscriminate felling of trees and security brush clearing and poor disposal of rubbish have only worsened the state of the country’s ecology.³³

• Deforestation through the search for cooking wood and charcoal production by concentrated refugee and displaced populations, especially noted around Kenema town and in the Freetown peninsula

• Deforestation through unsustainable slash-and-burn agriculture by war-affected populations

• Deforestation through cutting wood as a cash crop

• Reduced wildlife through excessive hunting by refugee and displaced populations and civil combatants

• Beach erosion through uncontrolled selling of beach sand

• Erosion and water pollution through uncontrolled mining

• Water pollution through indiscriminate waste disposal in refugee and IDP camps

Organizations active in mitigating impacts of population displacements on the environment

As noted above, no agency of the size and resource base of UNHCR Guinea undertakes environmental work in Sierra Leone. Instead, if the environment is considered at all in the current atmosphere of life-saving relief work it is by a small number of lesser-funded, lower-profile organizations. These include the Environmental Foundation for Africa (EFA, formerly ENFOSAL), the Sierra Leone Adult Education Association, the Ministry of Agriculture’s Forestry, and Environment Division, and others not available during the consultants’ mission.³⁴ Additionally, a number of large international NGOs—particularly Africare, Catholic Relief Services, and World Vision International—undertake large agriculture recovery projects, whose intentions are not environmental protection but nonetheless may include environmentally friendly activities.³⁵ These activities are discussed below, though as with most other relief work in Sierra Leone, no environmental analyses have been undertaken to determine the extent to which they positively impact the environment.

First, EFA Sierra Leone implements a Freetown Schools and Community Awareness project in the Western Area. The project aims to raise awareness about environmental issues and to make communities themselves work for a better environment. Project activities include environmental awareness, tree nurseries and planting, introduction of energy-saving stoves, and establishment of community environmental action groups. Along similar lines, the Sierra Leone Adult Education Association (SLADEA) implements an Ecological Promotion Project throughout Sierra Leone—depending on the security situation—which aims to lift women to a higher educational status through activities including income generation, tree planting, use of improved stoves, and compost making. As part of the project, SLADEA has published three pamphlets targeted at the semi-literate, titled Fire for Cooking, How to Construct and Use a 3 Stone Mud Stove, and Neem Tree. The first two detail the benefits of improved stoves, while the third discusses the myriad uses of the neem tree (shade, leaves for medicine, oil for insecticides, soap, and toothpaste; wood for building, heating, and cooking). Finally, as a point of interest, SLADEA in January 1992 co-published a soft cover book for sale in Sierra Leone and abroad, detailing medicinal plant remedies for 32 common diseases and infections in West Africa, from toothache to measles to malaria.³⁶

On wildlife, the chimpanzee nature reserve located in the hills above Freetown seeks to reintroduce captured chimpanzees to the wild.³⁷ Prior to the May 1997 coup, the project collected chimpanzees from Freetown households, which had purchased the animals from bush traders, merchants, or other individuals. These animals ranged in size, age, and length of captivity, with the one common factor that they had been maintained in a human environment with no thought to reintegration into the wild. From informal discussions with the chimpanzee center staff in 1994 and 1995, several animals had been abused or tortured, rendering their reintroduction into natural habitat especially difficult. Nonetheless beginning in early 1995, the center staff began a program of withdrawal of the chimpanzees from public sight—previously visitors had been able to pay to hold baby chimps—in order to retard their acclimation to human beings. The first re-introductions were scheduled for mid-1997 but were inhibited by the May coup d’état. It is unknown when the first reintroduction will now be made.

On diversity of agricultural crops, a British-based staff member of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) is currently working on a project titled "Environment, seeds and farmers affected by the war."³⁸ Over a four-year period from 2000 to 2003, the project will undertake an assessment of the impacts of war, population displacement, humanitarian relief (food distribution) and agricultural rehabilitation (seed provisioning) on crop diversity and farmer seed systems. They also plan to research outputs and recommendations for the formulation and implementation of practices and policies at institutional, national, regional, and global levels for the effective restoration, conservation, and utilization of biological diversity in conflict areas. Outputs expected from the program include "databases, decentralized field trials, guidelines, policy recommendations, institutional capacity and general awareness,"³⁹ and "the establishment of a unit for national coordination and provision of environment advice for humanitarian relief and agricultural rehabilitation activities undertaken in Sierra Leone and the West Africa region."⁴⁰ Since the early 1990s, the staff member has made several visits to Sierra Leone, with her next visit planned for early 2000.

The Sierra Leone Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and the Environment (MAFE), through the office of the Chief Conservator of Forests, implements with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) a project titled "Restoring the Lion Mountain." The goal of the project is the prevention of further soil erosion from the Western Area peninsula mountains. Project activities begun in 1999 include the raising of 200,000 trees through youth groups, the selection of beneficiary communities, the planting of the trees, and finally growth monitoring. It is hoped by MAFE and CRS that the long-term impact will be a measurable reduction in the rate of soil erosion from the hills surrounding Freetown, particularly during the heavy rains that cause flooding in the city from June through October. At such times, visual observations from high points in Freetown show streaks of brown silt reaching out nearly half a mile into the ocean on all sides of the peninsula, carrying to sea the remaining topsoil—along with pollution from streets and gutters—from the city and its environs. The project is valued at about $30,000, and according to CRS, a pre-implementation environmental analysis was undertaken. Nonetheless, the positive impact of the project remains several years in the future, after survival rates for the trees will be known.⁴¹

Two other organizations in Sierra Leone working in conservation are the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone (CSSL) and the Council for Human Ecology in Sierra Leone (CHECSIL).⁴² The former was fairly active before 1997, working in education and awareness as well as conservation management in the nation’s national parks. CHECSIL’s work was similar, and prior to May 1997, they undertook weekly radio programs on ecology issues.

Agricultural programs that may have a positive environmental impact include Africare’s seed rice distribution program, centered in Bo, Pujehun, and Kenema districts and valued at two million dollars, which aims to increase food security through increasing the food production of displaced farmers and farmers who have lost their seed stock as a consequence of the war. Its activities include distribution of rice seed and vegetable cuttings. Catholic Relief Services manages a similar program in Sierra Leone, centered in several districts across the country and valued at one million dollars. Finally, World Vision implements an agriculture program, also valued at one million dollars, that targets war-affected farmers with seed rice. Its program, like that of Africare and CRS, includes districts in the Southern Province.

The main reason each of these projects may positively impact the environment is that without exception, each distributes lowland or swamp varieties of seed rice in an attempt to wean Sierra Leonean farmers away from their traditional upland, slash-and-burn agriculture. Upland agriculture, which relies on the clearing of fresh forest or other land each year for planting, pushes farmers to cut trees and burn ground cover for rapid clearing of fields. Such burning, however, ever more quickly depletes the soil of its fertility, usually allowing only one farming season and thereby necessitating fresh slashing and burning the following year. Finally in Sierra Leone, some of the only areas that remain highly fertile—and thus attractive to farmers—are forest cover. Within this context, lowland rice farming, which relies on existing lowland or swamp areas and allows for intensive farming with generally increased yield, is an attractive option and is declared by many NGOs in their funding appeals as environmentally friendly. Nonetheless there exist three caveats. First, lowland or swamp areas in Sierra Leone and elsewhere in West Africa are often areas of high environmental value, thus concentrating agriculture activities there may have adverse effects. Second, at the same time as they distribute lowland rice seed, each of the three NGOs mentioned also distributes upland seed rice in deference to the preference of Sierra Leonean farmers (lowland farming requires more intensive land preparation and thereby greater labor). Thus while their projects may induce farmers to cultivate the lowlands, they similarly provide the resources for upland farms and environmental degradation.

The third caveat concerns the Overseas Development Institute’s (ODI) research into war, environment, and seeds. Basically, while humanitarian aid programs may respond to the lack of post-war seed stock with a needed injection, such injection may be so limited in genetic variety—limited to less than three seed types—that it reduces the long-term genetic diversity of crops in a region. This worry has raised the interest of several persons familiar with West African agriculture, including Tom Remington, a Catholic Relief Services agriculture advisor based in East Africa, and author Gordon Thomasson. According to Remington, "The major impact [of conflict] on the ‘environment’ is a loss of genetic diversity in the traditional land races held by farm families impacted by conflict. This loss of genetic diversity can occur during the period of displacement as well as during the return and reestablishment of the farming system. Families can lose genetic resources when they are provided with ‘improved’ seed when returning home and reestablishing their farming systems."⁴³ In even stronger terms, Thomasson writes in 1991 about Liberia:

There is virtually no time to debate the priority of preserving the diversity of the indigenous agricultural gene pool. No crops have been sown or harvested in some areas since 1989, when entire villages were driven from their lands by the war. Since no crops were sown in many areas in 1990, and people facing starvation have eaten seed rice that soldiers did not confiscate or burn, many rural areas face worse than short-term starvation. Irreplaceable agricultural resources on which self-sufficiency depends, including a highly diversified genetic pool of ecologically adapted staple crop varieties that are often unique to each village, will be lost within the coming year unless immediate efforts are made to save them.⁴⁴

Aid agencies in Sierra Leone and also Liberia may not be aware of Remington and Thomasson’s concerns. In fact during the consultants’ discussions in Sierra Leone—plus those in Liberia where similar programs are implemented—only two agencies expressed knowledge about the above. First, Kerry Sly, Country Representative for Africare, disagreed, stating that though aid agencies procured and distributed "monoculture" seed, in fact the means of seed collection used by private companies in Sierra Leone and Guinea, who then sell seed to NGOs and their partners, guarantees a significant genetic mixture.⁴⁵ Sly further stated that most commercial sellers knowingly exaggerate their seed uniformity—carefully filling a few sample bags with single varieties while the bulk of the purchase is mixed—resulting in seed bags with any number of improved and indigenous varieties depending on the diversity of the collection site. While the assertion is probable, the fact nonetheless remains that aid agencies float their procurement contracts based on criteria including seed purity, without thought to genetic diversity.⁴⁶ Second, Edward Keturakis of USAID HEPA in Guinea noted that refugees there had in some cases nearly eliminated certain varieties of wild palm tree, forcing the Guinean authorities to plan for the importation of improved palm seedlings from Côte d’Ivoire, varieties that are expected to have a narrower genetic mix.

Liberia

History of population displacement

As with the Sierra Leone discussion above, the following pages will only discuss population displacement within Liberia, including refugees and internally displaced persons. For discussion on the huge numbers of Liberian refugees forced into neighboring countries during the war, see the Guinea section above and the Côte d’Ivoire section below. Also Figures 2, 4 and 6 provide a visual analysis of the numbers of refugees and IDPs currently in Liberia, their approximate dates of arrival in their current locations, and their expected areas of resettlement (in Liberia and in Sierra Leone for the refugees). Of course, as with the Guinea and Sierra Leone discussions, such resettlement can only be guessed at. In total, UNHCR estimates that 102,000 Sierra Leonean refugees are currently in Liberia, divided between four counties, Lofa, Grand Cape Mount, Montserrado, and Margibi.⁴⁷ The current figures, however, are now being revised following a mass movement of refugees in September and October 1999 from Lofa County in the north of the country to Cape Mount County in the west. Such movement follows the recent escalation of insecurity in the Voinjama, Kolahun, and Vahun areas of Lofa, with two major incidents occurring this year.⁴⁸ The latest figures on IDPs record approximately 30,000 remaining in or near Monrovia, with another 11,000 recently displaced from upper Lofa and now taking refuge in Zorzor.⁴⁹

The history of population displacement in Liberia is similar to that in Sierra Leone, where refugees and displaced persons moved either across borders or within the country, according to regularly changing areas of insecurity. Eventually, by the close of 1992, huge numbers of persons on the counties bordering Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire had fled across the borders to escape escalating attacks on civilians. Amidst the violence, three locations within the country became centers for the internally displaced, namely Monrovia, Buchanan, and Kakata. Each of these areas registered significant population increases, with Monrovia accepting anywhere from one-half to three-quarters of a million new residents. The NPFL’s 1992 Operation Octopus closed upcountry routes to the Monrovia population for most of that year, pushing residents to further deplete the increasingly small natural resources about the city. International agencies brought food aid into Monrovia and Buchanan at this time to offset mounting hunger, at one point distributing to nearly every household in Monrovia.

The security situation remained tenuous throughout 1993 and 1994, with little movement among the IDP populations and with no thought to repatriation among the refugees in neighboring countries. The situation did not change dramatically until mid-1997, after the looting of Monrovia in April 1996, the disarmament of factions by ECOMOG in early 1997, and the election of Charles Taylor as president in July. Miraculously, toward the close of 1997 hundreds and then thousands of internally displaced persons began to leave Monrovia, Kakata, and Buchanan for areas of return, with still larger numbers moving in early 1998. The World Food Programme (WFP) and Catholic Relief Services, longtime distributors of relief aid to IDP populations, actually ceased urban feeding in March 1998, by which time the Buchanan and Kakata camp populations had almost fallen to zero. Meanwhile the Liberian Refugee, Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC), in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme and the Sierra Leone Red Cross, undertook an ambitious three-phase program of IDP resettlement targeting families in Voice of America (VOA) and other camps in and near Monrovia. In blocks of roughly 10,000 family heads or 50,000 individuals, the Red Cross provided plastic sheeting, cooking utensils, and some household items—plus food from WFP—to IDPs on their arrival in dozens of resettlement areas. The program continued from early 1998 to 1999, by which time only an estimated 30,000 internally displaced remained in Monrovia. It is widely expected that these persons may never resettle.

Concurrent with IDP resettlement after elections, UNHCR assisted several thousand Liberian refugees each month from early 1998 onwards to return from Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire. Still greater numbers repatriated on their own, usually settling in county capitals and towns along the border before finally resettling in their home areas. According to UNHCR records, as of February 10, 1999, the agency had assisted 98,000 Liberian refugees to repatriate, while an additional 160,000 had returned by themselves.⁵⁰ Up to the time of writing, over 100,000 Liberians remain across the borders (see attached maps and Guinean and Côte d’Ivoire sections for details). Whether or when these persons will return to Liberia remains in question, though it must be recognized that recent events in upper Lofa County have not inspired Liberian refugees near that border with Guinea to return. This insecurity raises problems not just for Liberians outside the country but for those Liberian IDPs recently displaced from the Voinjama area to Zorzor, as well as for the estimated 25–30,000 Sierra Leonean refugees who arrived in upper Lofa—specifically the Vahun area—in December 1998 and January 1999, fleeing conflict in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. These refugees originally settled in Vahun and then laboriously moved to two new UNHCR sites in Kolahun, approximately one-half the distance from Vahun to the county capital Voinjama. After two attacks in only five months, however, they found themselves on the move again in August 1999, south toward the Sinje refugee camp in Grand Cape Mount County. Upwards of 14,000 former Kolahun camp residents had settled at Sinje—in a second target="_blank" camp there appropriately named Sinje II—as of early October.⁵¹ Prior to the August violence, UNHCR had contracted the Environmental Foundation for Africa to undertake environmental sensitization in several of its camps in Liberia, and such work is now underway at the Sinje site. Meanwhile, an estimated 11,000 newly internally displaced have settled in Zorzor, themselves forced from upper Lofa by the insecurity.⁵² While the pre-1999 population of Zorzor is not known, it is certain the IDPs’ arrival will have expanded the town’s population dramatically.

Effects of population displacement on the environment

The effects of the population displacements in Liberia in many ways are little different from those included in the above discussions on Guinea and Sierra Leone. They involve impacts such as the following:

• Clearing of large tracts of land for settlements

• Disturbing natural water sources

• Dumping of waste, mineral extraction, and sand mining

• Pit sawing and hunting

Liberia differs in terms of population migration impact on the environment in that in many cases, populations were moving out. In areas that were vacated completely or with low population densities, vegetation regenerated and wildlife populations replenished, and thus the conflicts may have had a temporary and short-lived positive impact on the environment.

Organizations active in mitigating impacts of population displacements on the environment

As with Guinea and Sierra Leone, aid agencies’ reactions to population displacement may likely negatively impact the environment in Liberia. That is, Liberia saw in the 1990s the same rush to construct refugee and IDP camps as occurred in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Within Liberia, the Environmental Foundation for Africa (EFA) is one of the few organizations that have undertaken serious research into the impact of refugee camps on the surrounding natural environment. EFA is undertaking a National Campaign for Environmental Awareness in Montserrado, Bong, Nimba, and Cape Mount counties in Liberia. Through its team of volunteers and with financial and logistics assistance from donors in Europe and UNHCR, EFA is undertaking baseline surveys, compilation of photos and other information, and establishment of community environmental action groups to implement environmental prescriptions selected by communities themselves. Anticipated outcomes of the project are as follows:

• 100,000 trees planted

• 4,000 stoves produced

• Communities more selective in cutting trees

• People more conscious of the environment, sanitation, and danger of uncontained fires

The Society for the Conservation of Nature in Liberia (SCNL) was founded by Alexander Peal in 1986. All conservation activities of this organization were forced to cease during the war. In 1992, while still in exile, Alex founded the Society for the Renewal of Nature Conservation in Liberia (SRNCL) to keep the conservation efforts in Liberia alive. Within weeks of the 1997 cease-fire in Liberia, he led a small group, accompanied by international peacekeeping soldiers, to assess the status of Sapo National Park (Liberia's first and only national park) and its surrounding communities. Alex returned to Monrovia in 1998 where he is now working to resume the country’s conservation activities. The SCNL conducts conservation education and awareness activities focused on Sapo National Park in Sinoe County; it additionally undertakes tree-planting within Monrovia and advocates on behalf of environmental organizations to the National Environment Commission. The organization recently partnered with Fauna and Flora International on a May 1999 study titled Survey and Preparation of a Preliminary Conservation Plan for the Cestos-Senkwehn Riversheds of South-eastern Liberia (see References—Robinson and Suter 1999).

Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Federation, and World Vision International have each been given grants by the European Commission and USAID’s Bureau for Africa (and in the case of CRS, USAID’s Office of Food for Peace) for the implementation of wetland rice farm projects in-country. While many project activities resemble past seed and tool initiatives (see attached project activities and Sierra Leone discussion above), the projects have several new features. First, according to CRS staff in Liberia, in the clearing of environmentally fragile wetlands for swamp rice cultivation, the agencies are considering setting aside funds to protect an equal number of hectares of wetland elsewhere in the country from clearing.⁵³ Second and equally important, in preparation for project implementation these three NGOs undertook a three-week evaluation of project sites in Liberia and developed a booklet titled "Guidelines for Environmentally Sound Development of Wetland in Liberia." The booklet, which is available through the agencies’ offices in Liberia, provides an outline of practical steps for sustainable and environmentally sound wetland agriculture in Liberia, and addresses such issues as the following:

• Land valuation

• Land drainage

• Exposure to flood risk

• Land tenure

• Land clearing and leveling

• Erosion

• Soil productivity loss

• Environmental health

• Disruption of native flora and fauna

• Fertilizer use

• Pesticide use

• Pest management

• Encroachment on protected areas

According to staff from those agencies, preparation of the guidelines was a prerequisite for USAID to release each agency’s funding. In this manner, the wetland guidelines expanded on an existing USAID policy for non-emergency programs (such guidelines are not required for emergency interventions as defined within USAID), namely the presentation with all project proposals of an Initial Environmental Examination (IEE). This requires agencies to document in writing the extent or risk of damage each USAID-funded project may have on the local environment. If determined too risky, the donor mission and its environmental representatives in-country or within the region may request a project rewrite or choose not to fund the activity at all. In theory, the IEE is a sound document, alerting both NGO staff and donors to possible weaknesses in their environmental planning. In truth in post-war Liberia, however, it was viewed as less a welcome chance to review project impact than an additional hurdle in the project approval process.⁵⁴

One aid program in Liberia that gained wide acclaim in 1998 and 1999, but according to researchers may negatively impact the environment, is the European Commission’s road and bridge rehabilitation program. Started in force in 1998 in an effort to reopen Liberia’s devastated road network, the project targeted major roads in several counties nationwide plus undertook the construction of metal bridges over several rivers in-country. Such access was widely recognized as critical toward the successful rehabilitation of the nation’s economy. As a consequence of the program, vehicles that before 1997 were forced to drive from Monrovia to Greenville through Zwedru, could now drive straight in half the time and half the distance. Similar infrastructure improvements have been undertaken by the Commission on other major roads in the nation.⁵⁵ However, in discussion with individuals familiar with Liberia, criticism has been placed on the project for the increased access it gives commercial logging companies to previously inaccessible areas of the country. For example, from an email response to the consultants’ query regarding road infrastructure improvements in Liberia:

The road that cuts through the Krahn-Bassa forest is a direct result of the logging activities. The construction of bailey bridges by the EU is greatly aiding the logging companies’ settlement in this area and the accompanying loss of wildlife and habitat. During our surveys of the Cestos-Senkwehn watersheds this year, we found essentially an empty forest. While there were seemingly healthy populations of pygmy hippo and forest cow (both difficult to kill), there was nearly no sign of duikers, and gun shots were heard nightly. The loggers reportedly were putting out 150–300 wire snares per person.⁵⁶

During the consultants’ time in Liberia, contact was made with the European Commission and comments requested on the above. In response, the EC defended its program and stated that rather than encourage logging, its bridges are specifically constructed not to allow large vehicle movement (their width is restricted).⁵⁷Further, the EC stated that without their interventions, logging companies would construct log bridges, as evidenced in parts of Rivercess and Sinoe counties in 1998.

Finally, a number of smaller environmental organizations work in Liberia. The Pollution Control Association of Liberia is concerned with health education on pollution. The Liberian Environmental Protection Organization aims to focus on the contamination of the Messurado River. The Society Against Environmental Degradation aims to orient its work toward air and water pollution in the Monrovia area. Finally the Center for Environmental Education and Protection, raises environmental awareness in schools in the capital.

Côte d’Ivoire

History of population displacement

Much of the discussion on the movement of refugees within the region has been covered in the pages above. Figures 1–6 provide a visual analysis of the forced movement of refugees into and out of Côte d’Ivoire over the course of the past nine years. By most accounts, the arrival of Liberian refugees in Côte d’Ivoire parallels that in Guinea. Of course the numbers were different—325,000 to 350,000 in the first compared with 600,000 in the second⁵⁸—however, the reception provided in both countries to the fleeing Liberians was considered exceptionally cordial. Thus as fighting spread across Liberia in the early 1990s, moving from Nimba County in the north toward the south and east through Grand Gedeh and Maryland counties, Liberian refugees crossed into Côte d’Ivoire and found welcome settlement in small and medium-sized villages near the border, where the refugees were semi-integrated among local populations. Later, on arrival of international assistance, some camps were established in Danané, Guiglo, and Tabou prefectures, but like in Guinea, the non-camp environment became the norm for Côte d’Ivoire’s refugee areas.

From 1990 to 1992, a first set of Liberian refugees settled in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire. Their numbers equaled about 120,000, representing former populations from mainly Nimba, Grand Gedeh, and Maryland counties in Liberia. Between 1993 and 1994, two additional waves of refuges arrived, bringing the total numbers by the close of 1994 to the figure quoted above. There the refugees remained—with medical, educational, and other services available to them that often surpassed what they had left in Liberia—until early 1998, when spontaneous and organized repatriation began.⁵⁹ Indeed by mid-1999, after a period of 18 months of relative peace and stability in eastern Liberia, the number of refugees remaining in Danané, Guiglo, and Tabou had been reduced to the 119,900 refugees shown on the attached maps.⁶⁰ The success of the Ivorian repatriation, as compared with the relatively small Liberian repatriation numbers for Guinea, hinges on the stability of the major resettlement areas in Nimba, Grand Gedeh, and Maryland, as compared with the insecurity in Lofa County in 1999. Of course, as UNHCR readily admits that the majority of refugees return without their assistance, the fact that over 100,000 Liberians remain until today in Danané, Guiglo, and Tabou prefectures questions whether—or in what numbers—these persons will ever return to Liberia.

Effects of population displacement on the environment

Unlike in Guinea, it seems that few studies have been undertaken concerning the impact of population displacement on the Côte d’Ivoire environment. In fact, the only one available to the consultants during their trip—which has already been referenced in this paper—is the UNHCR Country Report for Côte d’Ivoire, published in August 1998 by the organization’s environmental unit. And in one of the first findings from their report, the authors note that as a result of the refugees’ dispersed settlement along the Ivorian-Liberian border, "It is clear that many of the problems often encountered in camp situations—widespread deforestation, water pollution, health hazards, and conflict over sparse natural resources—exist on a much less serious level in Côte d’Ivoire."⁶¹ Nonetheless, in the swath of land occupied by the refugees from Danané south to Tabou, there exist tropical rainforests as well as two protected areas, Taï National Park and Nzo Fauna Reserve. Meanwhile surrounding areas were seeded since the 1970s with cash-crop plantations for export, thus "Those refugees who settled amongst their kinsmen along the western border of Haute-Dodo [a forest reserve], are more or less ‘sandwiched’ between, on the east, palm plantations and private farms and, on the west, the forest reserve itself."⁶² Indeed as a consequence of the refugee settlement in these areas, "the population density [from 1990 to 1994] along the western border of the Haute-Dodo forest reserve jumped from 26 per km² to 68 per km²."⁶³

As with Guinea, such an increase in population must necessarily have impacted on the consumption rate of natural resources in the refugee settlement zone. However, as UNHCR’s report goes on to say, when such impact became a burden on the local environment—as an example when protected areas were encroached for firewood collection—the Ivorian authorities acted swiftly, even replanting twelve hectares of damaged forest in 1995.⁶⁴ Of course, as with Guinea, it must also be recognized that what environmental degradation did occur in the region might not be attributable entirely to refugees. In this regard, Côte d’Ivoire’s massive commercial logging industry—as evidenced in the port city of San Pedro in the southwest of the country—remains active, with the rate of deforestation "having an increasingly negative impact on the ecosystems and climates of Côte d’Ivoire, its neighbors, and the whole of West Africa."⁶⁵ However, without further evidence or citations, it is perhaps safest to say that the impact of population displacement in Côte d’Ivoire’s border zone would have resembled that of Guinea, recognizing that the Liberian population in Côte d’Ivoire never reached that inside Guinea, in fact equaling only about 58 percent (350,000 compared to 600,000) at its maximum.

Organizations active in mitigating impacts of population displacements on the environment

Many environmental organizations are active in Côte d’Ivoire, including Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund. However, in terms of agencies active within the relief zone comprising refugee settlements on the western border with Liberia, such organizations are not known. Indeed though UNHCR maintains offices in those areas, many of its partners—International Rescue Committee, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, Catholic Mission, Action Contre la Faim—have long since moved their operations into Liberia. This move was undertaken intentionally in 1997 and 1998, as a means of encouraging the repatriation of refugees to Liberia by increasing reintegration activities there. Thus while dozens of relief agencies continue operations in refugee areas in Guinea, the same is not true with former (and continuing) refugee areas in Côte d’Ivoire. Equally it must be recognized that major funding for refugee-related activities has similarly moved across the border into Liberia. Nonetheless, it has been reported that in 1999, the Ivorian Ministry of Agriculture is prepared to submit to the U.S. Government, through the U.S. State Department’s Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration (BPRM) in Abidjan, a 22 million dollar proposal for environmental rehabilitation along the Liberian border.⁶⁶ Whether such a proposal will be funded is not clear.

In line with its refugee mandate, the bulk of BPRM’s significant budget (see bar graph of annual operational budgets of several institutions below) will continue to go toward human-centered relief operations within West Africa. Indeed during discussions with BPRM staff in Abidjan, it was emphasized that environmental considerations will continue to take low priority during the emergency phase of refugee operations, when human life takes center stage. As such, BPRM does not currently fund any environmental projects, with the exception of possible environmental work implemented by UNHCR. Such work, however, follows UNHCR’s internal environmental mandate and not that of its donor.⁶⁷

Impact of Funding Priorities on the Environment

Generally both relief and development agencies—including conservation organizations—deem environmental work possible only in times of peace and stability. In the emergency and post-emergency periods of civil conflict, a preponderance of aid resources goes to relief agencies concentrating on life-saving and life-improving health and economic activities. What few resources filter down from emergency operations to environmental organizations for conservation work often appear through the efforts of individual relief staff as token allocations from emergency budgets. Even today, two years after the close of the Liberian civil war, a significant proportion of donor funds targets refugees, displaced populations, and community infrastructures destroyed by the conflict. In fact worldwide, donors to conservation work are only now beginning to increase their support for conservation in Liberia and other West African nations. Certainly there exist seed funds for small to medium-scale environmental and conservation activities, provided by agencies such as World Conservation Union, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, and Flora and Fauna International. Yet compared with funding for relief activities, the former are nearly insignificant.

Simultaneously, refugees and internally displaced persons who benefit from relief aid comprise individuals and families who, in pre-conflict times, depended almost entirely for their livelihoods on agriculture and a balanced relationship with the environment. One hopes that they will return to this way of life as peace and stability return; nonetheless, the majority of humanitarian interventions, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars annually, have been planned and executed with little regard for the environment. And prior to reconstruction, environmental support in the midst of civil crisis is especially crucial. During this period, emergency funds for life-saving activities flow quickly into relief programs, pushing aside environmental agendas even more than usual. It is also at this time that national and local capacities for environmental regulation are most inhibited, while the rewards for natural resource exploitation by conflicting parties are greatest.

To highlight the discrepancy between relief and conservation funding, it is informative to compare the annual worldwide budgets of a sample of relief agencies—those undertaking the bulk of emergency work in West Africa—with those of two large environmental NGOs (see figure below).⁶⁸ The disparity is dramatic.

Impact of Unsustainable Resource Extraction on the Environment

Beyond the impact of population displacement, the intensified exploitation of timber, gold, diamonds, and other natural resources as a result of civil conflict has negatively affected the West African environment. While little documented, such impacts have been seen in the unregulated extraction of primary and secondary growth timber, the cratering of thousands of acres of diamond-rich lands, and the poisoning with separation solvents of gold rivers in Sierra Leone and Liberia (see Figures 8 and 9).

A 1994 study by the Environmental Foundation for Sierra Leone of small-scale gold and diamond mining in Kambia district, Sierra Leone, examined the environmental impact of 5,000 displaced miners from Kono. Within weeks of their arrival, they began prospecting for gold and diamonds in Kambia’s agricultural swamps. By October 1994, an estimated 10,000 acres of inland valley rice swamps spanning the length of the district had been degraded and made unsuitable for agriculture. In the process, the displaced miners attracted a following of local youth and entrepreneurs who believed, "One good-sized stone will solve all my problems." In reality, the swamps did not hold the quality and size of gems found in Kono, rendering most of the mining fruitless. Yet of 150 miners interviewed in the district, only a handful showed awareness of the negative impact of their activities on the environment. More recently, a study published in May 1999 by the World Bank and World Wildlife Fund Global Forest Alliance Project detailed the threats posed to ecologically rich southeastern Liberia by commercial logging firms eager to exploit timber tracts in the loose post-civil-war regulatory environment.⁶⁹

Underlying the above, uncontrolled resource extraction in Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 1990s has been cyclical and endemic, with access to resources initiating civil war, then funding continued conflict through the sale of concessions for arms, and finally funding post-war reconstruction through the sale by weak governments of unsustainable extraction rights. Such exploitation often occurs owing to a lack of legislation and/or an inability and unwillingness of national governments to enforce existing legislation. For example in Freetown, governments and warring factions have acted illegally by allowing mining and logging in the peninsula’s protected areas. Such lands represent the last stands of tropical coastal mountain forest in West Africa and for years have survived under government protection. However, between 1991 and 1998, small and large-scale pit-saw operators supplied timber from these protected forests to local markets. More recently, after the January 1999 attack on Freetown and the destruction of hundreds of homes, local and international relief agencies procured thousands of wooden building poles from the peninsula for reconstruction. Local government foresters, underpaid, ill-equipped, and lacking the necessary incentives or motivation to enforce forest protection policies, turned a blind eye to such exploitation, while impoverished communities willingly provided labor for the cutting and transportation of poles.

From the above, policy makers in West Africa are at best unaware of the environmental destruction underway, expecting that resources will remain plentiful. At worst, international financial institutions unwittingly promote overexploitation of natural resources in the push for debt repayment through export earnings and foreign reserves. Either way, environmental legislation and enforcement are not prioritized by national governments or by aid agencies, who see the environment as secondary to human poverty. More specifically, the lack of well-defined government policies on the exploitation of natural resources and protection of the environment has led in West Africa to the tendency of politicians to relax environmental and social standards governing the exploitation of resources, in order to encourage investment. In the mining industry alone, over 70 countries worldwide have revised their mining regulations in the past decade, usually to facilitate the expansion of mining. The priority given to minerals results from, and leads to, undervaluation of other economic activities, including those based on forest products. Currently prices for manufactured metal products are increasing, though the extra income continues to benefit developed countries, with supplier developing countries paying the environmental and social costs.

In the process, government and civil society environmental institutions have been marginalized, reducing access to existing and new data on the nature and extent of environmental degradation. Instead, major economic players outside the region wield undue influence. In his political analysis of the war economy in Liberia, William Reno states that "the fueling of the war through the illegal sale of Liberia’s natural resources has been ignored at the international level, in spite of early evidence and analysis of its nature and of the involvement of major international players."⁷⁰ Worldwide 19 of the 25 top mining companies are based in industrialized countries,⁷¹ with the concessions of those operating in Sierra Leone protected during the war by international security firms. Thus individuals and business inside and outside West Africa amass wealth through marginally-regulated resource extraction. For these groups, conflict provided and still provides a conducive working environment. Small-scale miners, of course, remain key players in the industry through their cheap labor, as the lack of alternative economic opportunities in both Sierra Leone and Liberia increase the short-term incentive to engaging in timber, gold, and diamond extraction.

Finally, principal donors to relief and development operations in West Africa are headquartered in Europe, Canada, and the United States. The investment and commercial firms that finance and manage natural resource extraction in West Africa are often based in these same places, and this is where the greatest part of the profits end up. Examination of the living conditions of a large percentage of the West African population shows that income from the exploitation of natural resources by overseas and local companies has done little to improve local living standards.

Source: EFA

Figure 7. Map of Sierra Leone resource extraction

Highlights areas of current resource extraction in Sierra Leone

Sources: Refugees UNHCR Liberia, UNHCR Regional Directorate, UN Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa

Figure 8. Map of Liberia resource extraction

Highlights areas of current resource extraction in Liberia.

Conclusions

Following the discussions above, this section of the report aims to draw conclusions regarding the impact of civil conflict on the environment in West Africa and to establish recommendations for further action in regard to environmental conservation.

1. Impacts of conflicts in West Africa do not stop at the border of the countries directly concerned. They affect all adjacent countries, through both the mass migration of people fleeing the fighting, across borders. Other countries can be indirectly involved in the conflict, whether it be through the supply of peacekeeping forces, or the supply of arms. The regional nature of conflicts necessitates a regional approach to conservation as well. This would allow conservationists to maintain a presence even when civil conflict breaks out in one country.

2. The impact of population displacement on the environment is not well documented. Other impacts of civil conflict on the environment are even less well documented.

3. In West Africa, UNHCR has likely developed the most sophisticated environmental guidelines of any relief agency and provides a coordination point for integrating conservation into refugee programs.

4. All else equal, dispersed semi-integrated refugee camps seem better suited for the environment and natural resource conservation—and hence long-term sustainable rural development once peace returns—than large, centralized camps.

5. The incentives for displaced populations to engage in environmentally sound practices change with the degree of integration into host communities and the social pressures enforced by the latter. Similarly, if displaced populations view their stay as transitory, the incentive for conservation may decline.

6. In relief programs, host government authority for implementation is often given to planning or coordination ministries with little mandate or experience in environmental protection.

7. Most relief funding is channeled through international agencies, while most conservation work is undertaken by national NGOs and community-based organizations.

8. Limited contact between the relief and conservation sectors, the lack of fora for exchange, and the skewing of resources toward the former, result in limited interest in environmental work by relief staff and lack of project funding for conservation.

9. Many donor and relief staff believe that environmental protection ranks low against human protection and can be initiated only during post-conflict peace and stability.

10. Civil conflict may at once exploit natural resources and be the result of resource exploitation.

11. For countries engrossed in or emerging from conflict, exploitation of natural resources, at unsustainable rates, often provides a needed source of revenue.

Recommendations for Further Action

Governments and organizations within West Africa must act to mitigate the negative effects of civil conflict on the environment. Such actions need not alter these agencies’ mandates—rather, small changes to their working policies might significantly improve the environmental sustainability of their programs. The goal of the following recommendations will be (1) to increase the willingness and capacity of host governments to legislate and monitor their environments and environment, (2) to insert more effective and more binding environmental regulations into the release of donor funding, (3) to improve the environmental sustainability of relief programs through increased awareness of the need for environmental management among relief personnel and the improved regulation of relief programs vis-à-vis the environment, and (4) to bridge the knowledge and practice gap between conservation and relief and development agencies, by increasing collaboration and expanding the presence of conservation staff during periods of civil conflict. To accomplish the above, the consultants propose the following:

For host governments

1. Insert environmental conservation into national aid and private sector policies, revising legislation as necessary

2. Amend aid agency codes of conduct to require adherence to environmental legislation

3. Insert sector government agencies in the coordination and management of relief programs to supplement overall coordination and raise awareness of environmental issues in planning and coordination ministries (a role with which environmental NGOs could help)

4. Ensure that resources are extracted in an environmentally sustainable manner and in accordance with existing environmental legislation

5. Seek donor resources for environmental policy development and implementation

6. Ensure that environmental legislation is enforced, monitoring adherence on a regular basis

7. Invest in the environment through revised education curricula

For donors

1. Develop donor environmental guidelines for project approval, approving funds only after a formal screening of project environmental soundness

2. Continue funding conservation agency work throughout the crisis period instead of relinquishing resources to only relief agencies, even if at low levels and for opportunistic activities

3. Monitor donor policy adherence to environmental issues

4. Fund resource centers for the study of civil conflict and environment, in order to expand on existing knowledge of the impact of civil conflict on the environment and develop sustainable action plans for the mitigation of negative impacts

For relief agencies

1. Advocate for increased donor funds for environmental intervention during conflict

2. Undertake contingency planning for disaster preparedness, identifying environmental experts and hotspots in advance of conflict

3. Appoint and empower environmental officers, train staff in environmental management, and collaborate with environmental organizations

4. Develop and implement environmental policies for refugee and IDP relief operations, including camp location, construction, and management (e.g., dispersal of refugees in Guinea into semi-integrated host settlements)

5. Develop a portfolio of conservation activities to couple with existing relief mandates cheaply and easily (e.g., food-for-work for environmentally sound wetland management in Liberia)

6. Monitor environmental progress on a regular basis, ensuring adherence with host government, donor, and relief agency environmental policies

For conservation agencies

1. Develop lasting links with the relief and development sectors, working to ensure the development and implementation of environmental guidelines by relief agencies

2. Advocate for increased donor assistance to environmental conservation by relief agencies in countries of conflict

3. Undertake contingency planning for disaster preparedness, identifying environmental experts and hot spots in advance of conflict

4. Sensitize the government, donors, and the relief community about environmental conservation in emergency programs (e.g., donors must understand that protection of the environment is a priority and deserves institutional and financial support)

5. Pool resources to support a united front of local environmental groups to intensify environmental education and conservation action

6. Work through crisis periods instead of relinquishing activities to relief agencies

7. Monitor environmental adherence to government, donor, and relief agency policy

8. Learn from experiences and widely communicate lessons learned

Summary

As indicated above, it is hoped that as the international community continues to channel millions of dollars annually into emergency programs in the Upper Guinea forest region—resources concentrated mainly in the hands of relief workers providing urgent food, water, medical care, and lodging to the millions affected by the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia—it will not turn its back on the impact of conflict on the environment in the region. In the long term, input of adequate resources to conserve or restore the environment and renewable natural resources is essential to improve the livelihoods of human populations in the region whether displaced or non-displaced, and promote peace and stability through sustainable development.

References

Atkinson, Philippa. 1997. The war economy in Liberia: A political analysis. Relief & Rehabilitation Network. May.

Barnish, G., and S. K. Samai. 1992. Some medicinal plant recipes of the Mende, Sierra Leone. SLADEA and Medical Research Council Library. January.

Barry, M., F. Camara, and H. Ketel. 1999. Environmental strategy for the refugee-hosting areas. UNHCR Engineering & Environmental Services Section. June.

Black, Richard. 1998. Refugees, environment, and development. Addison Wesley Longman Limited.

Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (BPNRM). Fiscal Year 2000 Report.

CAAD. 1999. The impact that overpopulation has had on the exploitation of Gueckedou's ecosystem. November 1.

Conservation International. 1998. Annual report.

CRS. 1998. Annual report.

CRS, LWS, WVI. 1999. Guidelines for environmentally sound development of wetlands in Liberia. October 6.

Dimanche, P. 1996. Formulation et préparation d’un document d’exécution de project pour la réhabilitation des zones affectées par les réfugiés en Guinée forestière et dans le sud-ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire. AGRIFOR Consult. August.

Fairhead, J., and M. Leach. 1996. Misreading the African landscape: Society and ecology in a forest-savanna mosaic. Cambridge University Press.

————. 1998. Reframing deforestation: Global analyses and local realities: Studies in West Africa. Routledge.

GTZ. 1999. Proposition d’actions suite a l’impact des refugiés en Guinée forestière. May 31.

Ham, R. 1999. Trip report, BSP disasters and biodiversity project. March.

Huband, Mark. 1998. The Liberian Civil War. London: Frank Cass & Co.

IUCN. 1999. Mining and forest degradation: Metals from the forests.

Longley, Catherine. 1999. 2000/2001 Darwin Round: Project summary. Overseas Development Institute.

Reno, William. 1998. Warlord politics and African states. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Republique de Guinée. 1999. Impact des refugiés sur les populations, l’environnement, les infrastructures socioéconomiques et de production des zones Guinéennees affectées. May.

Robinson, P., and J. Suter. 1999. Survey and preparation of a preliminary conservation plan for the Cestos-Senkwehn riversheds of south-eastern Liberia. World Bank-WWF Global Forest Alliance Project, SLADEA Ecological Promotion Programme, Third Phase. May.

SLADEA, Ecological Promotion Programme, Third Phase, page 1.

Thomasson, Gordon. 1991. Liberia's seeds of knowledge. Cultural Survival Quarterly, Vol. 15 (Summer).

UN (Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Unit). 1999. Sierra Leone humanitarian situation report, weekly update, 23–30 September 1999.

UNHCR. 1998. Country reports—Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea (towards sustainable environmental management, practices in refugee-affected areas). UNHCR Environment Unit, Geneva, Switzerland. August.

UNHCR. 1999a. Statistiques générales des refugiés Liberiens et Sierra-Leoneis, récensement général de Février 1999. UNHCR (Sous-Delegation de Gueckedou).

UNHCR. 1999b. Mid-year progress report. June 30.

UNHCR. 1999c. Regional Directorate for West and Central Africa. July 1.

World Food Programme. 1999. Status of 1999 food aids needs and shortfall.

World Wildlife Fund. 1998. Annual report.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Sheila Donoghue, Rebecca Ham, Stephanie Hando, Judy Oglethorpe, and Tracie Sam of the Biodiversity Support Program and Brent Bailey, Mohamed Bakarr, Dirck Byler, Silvio Olivieri and Mari Omland of Conservation International for their assistance in producing this report. We thank Carol Grigsby, Deputy Director for the Office of West African Affairs at USAID for providing useful comments on this document.

We also wish to thank the following attendees of Conservation International’s Conservation Priority-Setting Workshop held in Ghana in December 1999 for their invaluable input:

• Patrick Diskin, USAID Office of Food for Peace, Conakry, Guinea

• Edward Keturakis, USAID Health and Environment Protection Project for Refugees, Gueckedou, Guinea

• Alexander Kulue, Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission, Monrovia, Liberia

• Norwood Langley, Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs, Monrovia, Liberia

• Morten Petersen, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Geneva, Switzerland

• William Reno, Northwestern University Program of African Studies, Evanston, IL, USA

• Satenin Sagnah, Department Nationale des Eaux et Forêts, Conakry, Guinea

• Efas Sylla, United Nations Development Program, Conakry, Guinea

About the Biodiversity Support Program

The Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) is a consortium of World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and World Resources Institute, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). BSP’s mission is to promote conservation of the world’s biological diversity. We believe that a healthy and secure living resource base is essential to meet the needs and aspirations of present and future generations. BSP began in 1988 and will close down in December 2001.

A Commitment to Learning

Our communications activities are designed to share what we are learning through our field and research activities. To accomplish this, we try to analyze both our successes and our failures. We hope our work will serve conservation practitioners as a catalyst for further discussion, learning, and action so that more biodiversity is conserved. Our communications programs include print publications, Web sites, presentations, and workshops.

BSP Web Sites

We invite you to visit our general and program-specific Web sites, even after the program closes down in December 2001.

BSP Listserv

Through June 2001, you can receive e-mail updates about BSP through www.BSPonline.org. To join our listserv, click on stay informed and enter your e-mail address. We will keep you posted on project highlights, upcoming events, and our latest publications.

Ordering BSP Publications

Many of our print publications are now also available online at www.BSPonline.org. At the home page, click on publications. You can view publications online or, through June 2001, order copies to be sent to you. You may also contact us by mail, phone, or fax to request copies.

Contact BSP

For more information, to give us feedback, or to order copies of BSP publications, contact us.

The Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) is a consortium of World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and World Resources Institute, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This publication was made possible through support provided to BSP by the Global Bureau of USAID, under the terms of Cooperative Agreement Number DHR-A-00-88-00044-00. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID.

© 2000 by World Wildlife Fund, Inc., Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication for educational and other noncommercial purposes is authorized without prior permission of the copyright holder. However, WWF, Inc. does request advance written notification and appropriate acknowledgment. WWF, Inc. does not require payment for the noncommercial use of its published works and in no way intends to diminish use of WWF research and findings by means of copyright.