MONROVIA – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the leadership of Dr. Emmanuel K. Urey Yarkpawolo, is undergoing massive rebranding, with reports of accelerated progress, some unprecedented, in the first one year of incumbency.
According to an EPA press release, the new administration inherited a horde of challenges, and expectations and lack of morale amongst employees and stakeholders were very low as the institution was nearly moribund.
“First, Dr. Yarkpawolo inherited a completely demotivated workforce whose morale had dropped not only because of low salary earnings, but they were beset with less opportunities for career development,” the release further noted, adding: “To compound the situation, the institution’s bank account was dry, some employees had been fired for the wrong reasons, and while there seemed to be a deepening division among the staff, the buildings which housed their offices were dilapidated.”
But just a few months into his administration, said the release, employees at the EPA now have a lease on life as their institution undergoes sweeping reforms initiated by Dr. Yarkpawolo and his team.
Institution Strengthening
Dr. Yarkpawolo, speaking about gains at the EPA, during program marking the official closing of 2024 at the EPA Headquarters on December 20, said when his administration took over the EPA, they had to build a team of professionals who are now striving overtime to make the institution among the best in Liberia.
“To understand the situation at the EPA, we created two boxes,” he said. “We labelled one ‘Grievance box’ and the other ‘Innovation box’. The grievance box provides employees with a platform to voice their concerns in a bid to resolve workplace issues while the innovation box helps harness transformative ideas for improving the EPA.
“What is your mind? What are the things that are bad at the EPA, we asked the employees. We want to know what is on your mind. Therefore, write and put your grievances in the grievance box. We told them that writing their names was not required as we were only interested in the information and not the names of those giving the information. Similarly, we encourage them to put their ideas of improving the EPA in the Innovation Box.”
He continued: “We gathered lots of valuable information from our boxes. If we saw five or more comments on the same subject, we looked into that complaint. Our employees spoke and we listened to them. They complained about an old bus that broke down frequently. They spoke about the misplacement of staff as well as travel opportunities only to a few select staff. They alerted us about some employees that hardly came to work but were taking pay regularly. They complained and in some cases with specific details on instances of corruption that were robbing the EPA and the government of Liberia thousands of dollars.”
According to Dr. Yarkpawolo, these valuable pieces of information helped to reform the EPA.
He said the institution investigated the dismissal of officials and acted on recommendations to restore them to their positions as they were wrongly dismissed, making some changes at the management levels by placing people in their rightful positions without cutting down their salaries.
“We conducted spot checks to ensure workers were coming to work and leaving on time,” he further said. “We turned the Senior Management Team into a budget committee. Every Monday at 9am, when we have our Senior Management meeting, the comptroller shows the weekly expenditures, income and bank balances to all senior managers. We approved the Internal Auditors work plan giving them unhindered access to all EPA assets. We opened travel opportunities to all staff based on qualifications and nature of work.
“In fact, the first travel opportunity we had as Executive Director of the EPA was given to the Gender Coordinator, who had not had any travel opportunities for the last 5 years she worked for the EPA. We subjected the procurement process at the EPA to scrutiny based on Liberian laws, policies and regulation, ensuring that all procurement requirements were met.”
The EPA boss also reported that his administration conducted 1463 compliance inspections during the period 2024; investigated a total of 198 complaints brought to the attention of the EPA; received 318 ESIA applications, held 36 ESIA sittings, conducted 6 stakeholders’ consultations and issued 214 Environmental Permits; instituted 60 compliance notices amounting to halt orders, restoration orders, fines and shutdowns.
He indicated that the EPA has developed, validated and the Board and Policy Council approved 11 policy and regulatory instruments including water quality regulation, soil quality regulation, solid waste management policy and waste management regulation that are heavily private sector driven, radiation regulation, wetland regulation, lead in paint regulation and air quality regulation, just to name a few.
“We imposed more than one million dollars fines on companies violating the environmental laws of Liberia,” said the EPA chief, adding: “Fines imposed are directly paid to central government revenue; developed a work plan and a procurement plan; purchased two new buses for our employees, one vehicle for our deputy and one vehicle for our compliance department and conducted two policy council meetings and two governing board meetings.”
He intimated that his administration also hosted a number of trainings including bringing 20 young scientists from West Africa to launch the West African Ocean Acidification Network; opened a climate smart Laboratory at the University of Liberia where scientific data will be analyzed to support informed decision making; completed an EPA office at the Freeport of Monrovia, scheduled to open in January 2025; and as of January 2025, will be relocating to a modern building in Mamba Point.
The building, he further said, would have facilities that include computerized signing in and singing out for workers as well as CCTV, the EPA indicated.
“With funding support from climate financing, we are building coastal defense to prevent West Point from washing away. We are also building coastal defense in Greenville Sinoe County. We are building a meteorological center for Liberia,” he said.
Gains on the International Front
According to the EPA boss, his institution has made tremendous strides as it relates to enhancing Liberia’s presence within international forums dealing with global environmental issues.
He intimated that during the period under review, his administration signed and ratified eight international environmental agreements that will boost the country’s efforts in combating numerous health and environmental issues.
“We signed an MoU with Cambridge University to provide 150 scholarships for online learning in climate education that are worth more than 250,000 British Pounds. In Cali, Colombia, we participated in COP16 negotiations that led to the adoption of a framework for sustainable wildlife management, the inclusion of indigenous voices as integral to biodiversity governance as well as a global mechanism to ensure fair and equitable sharing of benefits from digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources.
“In Baku, Azerbaijan, the EPA led a team of Liberians that included a Superintendent, other government institutions and civil society organizations that successfully participated in the negotiations that led to a global promise of 300 billion dollars per year promised to developing countries to enable them to mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts from 2025 to 2035. 5. The EPA under the watchful eyes of our Deputy Director, led a team to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where 12 billion was promised to address land degradation and drought across 80 vulnerable countries,” Dr. Yarkpawolo said.
The Secretariat of the National Climate Change Steering Committee which is housed at the EPA has been responsible for mainstreaming climate change activities into the national development agenda.
According to Dr. Yarkpawolo, the Secretariat signed a Letter of Agreement with the Coalition of Rainforest Nations (CfRN) to provide technical capacity to enable the Government of Liberia to get ready to participate in the global carbon market in the next 12-24 months.
“We developed the road map for the operation of the National Climate Change Secretariat; developed TOR to recruit consultants that will develop the carbon policy, which is part of the readiness program; conducted four meetings of the NCCSC successfully,” the EPA boss indicated.
The EPA 5-Year Strategic Plan
Quoting the renowned philosopher Yogi, the EPA boss reminded Liberians that: “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” Thus the need for his institution working on a well-laid-out strategic plan.
“This is why we have developed the EPA 5 years strategic plan with a cost of 32 million dollars. Our 5-year (2025-2029) aligned with the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development Pillar 5 which addresses Environmental Sustainability with 13 a Strategic Goal to promote responsible management of natural resources, protect biodiversity, and enhance resilience to environmental changes, while fulfilling the country Nationally Determined Contributions and supporting economic growth and improving the quality of life for citizens. We will officially be launching this plan in January 2025.
“As I speak to you, we have already developed our 2025 work plan based on our strategic plan. This plan cost about 5 million dollars to implement. Although this may seem a relatively huge amount, our collective efforts, over the last 8 months, are a testament that more can be done with adequate funding. The new EPA, we are honored to lead, is an institution built on trust, commitment, respect and teamwork,” Dr. Yarkpawolo said.
Surmountable Constraints
Despite the huge gains achieved by Dr. Yarkpawolo and his team at the EPA, they are yet to overcome some constraints that need urgent attention, especially with regards to the country’s outstanding indebtedness to international bodies.
“Liberia owed nearly all Multilateral Environmental Agreements. These arrears are causing the country to lose its voting rights at international gatherings and is not good at all. Can you imagine, Honorable Board members, I will be sitting in a meeting representing Liberia and the big dash board will be showing all the countries that have paid their dues including neighboring countries, like Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Ivory Coast and Liberia will have zero payment and I have no big say in the discussion. It is embarrassing to say the least. Even this year, we have to manage to pay over 3,000 Euros to allow Liberia to participate and get some donations worth thousands of dollars from the IAEA. For this reason, we budgeted 150,000.00 to start paying our dues to international conventions in the 2025 budget and we are appealing to the Legislature to approve this amount,” the EPA boss said.
Other challenges he listed include limited environmental awareness among the population; limited staff and limited presence of EPA across the country; limited budgetary support and inadequate logistical support; and interference with EPA work in conducting environmental compliance.
The constraints notwithstanding, Dr. Yarkpawolo and his team have that the EPA will continue to be an effective voice for the protection and sustainable management of Liberia’s natural resources; fully committed to leading and working with our local and international partners to achieve better outcomes across all environmental issues.
The EPA boss especially thanked the country’s international partners, especially UNDP, Conservation International, the Canadian based Novasphere, Food and Agriculture Organization, USAID, the European Union and many others.
“We reaffirm our commitment to drive transformative climate actions, promote sustainable production and work relentlessly to achieve a clean, safe and healthy environment for this and succeeding generations,” Dr. Yarkpawolo said.
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