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Liberia's rainforest - "Peace for Nature swap" potential
Seeing the forest for the peace
William Powers
The New York Times
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
BANJUL,
Gambia Liberating Liberia
Twenty-five years of dictatorship and civil war, preceded by a century and a half of misrule, have made Liberia one of the world's poorest countries. But Liberia's development failures have paradoxically led to a success. Liberia has something that the world values now more than ever: a vast rain forest.
Liberia's status as a republic with strong ties to the United States kept out European colonizers, so no Western power came in to slice rails and roads into the interior. Nature flourished in splendid isolation, and today more than a third of the country is virgin rain forest, one of the largest proportions of any nation.
A Garden of Eden bloomed around the hamlets where I worked: Colobus monkeys crashed through the jungle canopy, pygmy hippos tobogganed into rivers, and sometimes the only roads through the forest were those blazed by elephants. Conservation International says that Liberia is the linchpin of West Africa's Upper Guinean forest, which is believed to shelter the greatest diversity of mammal species of any region in the world.
It's not just tree-huggers who want to save the Liberian rain forest; nearly all industrialized nations have made conserving the last great rain forests a priority. The Liberian forest serves us all: It mitigates global warming, harbors vulnerable species, could be the source of new medicines, and provides aesthetic and spiritual well-being.
Economics 101 is also at play here. As the supply of pristine rain forests declines rapidly and the demand for what they provide increases, their value increases. Liberia should capitalize on its ecological wealth by exchanging something the world needs for something Liberians desperately want: stability.
It would be a sort of Peace for Nature swap, based on the Debt for Nature model in which third world countries receive debt relief for conserving their natural heritage. Under Peace for Nature, Liberia would convert a significant part of itself into a UN biosphere reserve, zoned for both strict preservation and multiple use.
In return, the world would commit to a sustainable, lasting Liberian peace instead of the usual Band-Aid approach. This means a full 20 years, long enough to establish a habit of peace and to educate a new Liberian generation. We would ensure security through the United Nations, while training Liberians to do the job themselves, including retooling former fighters as park guards. We would also help bring electricity and piped water to their capital, Monrovia, and a few interior towns. Liberia's potential for ecotourism and certified timber production would be fulfilled over time, as its image was transformed.
Liberia faces one of two other possible futures, neither rosy.
The first is the status quo, which has Liberia headed for political collapse. The UN mission in Liberia has disarmed combatants, but the world still spends a thousand times more each day for war in Iraq than peace in Liberia. And while it's refreshing to drive across a Monrovia patrolled by grinning Ukrainians in blue helmets instead of the gun-toting children used by the ousted president, Charles Taylor, this lull is transient. Interest will fade as other conflicts ignite and the world pulls out the UN tanks. That day could bring anarchy and Liberia could become a breeding ground for the next generation of terrorists.
A second possibility is that the impoverished nation would try to keep itself afloat by selling its principal asset to multinational companies, auctioning timber concessions for rapid clear-cutting (a job Charles Taylor started). Profits would be sent offshore and Liberia would find itself a barren land.
Peace for Nature is an idea in keeping with the history of Liberia, whose very existence is a result of a deal struck in the United States between early 19th-century Northern liberals who yearned to help freed slaves go home and Southern conservatives who simply wanted them out of sight. Today, the greening of Liberia is both liberal (help starving Liberian children; heal the Earth) and conservative (reduce global warming cheaply; control anarchic zones that foster terrorism).
Luckily, President George W. Bush likes Liberia, and the feeling is mutual. It's not just that Liberians love America, which they certainly do. They adore Bush because he stood up for them. I heard the story a dozen times on my recent visit there: With U.S. marine helicopters thwacking over Monrovia in 2003, Bush warned that Charles Taylor had to leave Liberia. Taylor left for Nigeria, and is now, thankfully, a nonfactor.
A challenge of Bush's second term is to move beyond chasing tyrants to developing a foreign policy that's both creatively compassionate and conservative. Why not start with a green quid pro quo for Liberia?
(William Powers, who directed aid projects in Liberia from 1999 to 2001, is the author of ��Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africa's Fragile Edge.��)
Source: International Herald Tribune
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