Liberia puts a wartime logger in charge of its forests

Liberia’s new president, Joseph Boakai, has appointed a timber trader linked to illegal logging to head the agency responsible for the country’s forests. Rudolph Merab, a longtime ally of Boakai’s, was tapped to lead the Forestry Development Authority in February, prompting alarm from environmental advocates in Liberia, who say Merab lacks the required qualifications for the job and is likely to prioritize timber extraction over conservation or community forestry.

“He has been very critical of community participation in forest management,” said Jonathan Yiah, forest governance expert at Liberia’s Sustainable Development Institute. “More generally, he’s against the idea that communities should participate or give out concessions to logging companies, or even to manage forests.”

Merab replaces former FDA boss Mike Doryen, whose tenure was marred by allegations of corruption and lawbreaking. Appointed by soccer star-turned-president George Weah, who was defeated by Boakai last October, Doryen ran the forestry agency from 2018-2023.

In a leaked 2022 memo, the U.K. Foreign Office said that post-war regulations meant to protect Liberia’s rainforests and combat illegal logging virtually collapsed under Doryen. The memo described a “parallel system” for timber exports that bypassed legality checks and included the use of off-the-books accounts. In one widely publicized case, the FDA issued an export permit for millions of dollars’ worth of illegal logs, overriding the recommendations of a report from the country’s Department of Justice that accused Doryen and his staff of “serious breaches of Liberian law.”

“Generally speaking, the Weah period is seen by almost everybody as a complete disaster,” said Saskia Ozinga, a forest governance researcher and environmental advocate with more than a decade of experience advising Liberian policymakers. “Nobody ever said anything positive to me about the whole period, and there was a strong consensus that it had to completely change.”

Addressing corruption in Weah’s administration, in power from January 2018 until January 2024, was a centerpiece of Boakai’s campaign. Since taking office, he has initiated audits of some key government agencies. So far, though, the FDA hasn’t been included.

Advocates say Merab’s appointment may also violate a statute that requires the agency’s managing director to have a background in forest management.

“The issue is that whoever leads the forestry sector should be someone with vast experience and expertise, and not just on logging,” said Andrew Zeleman, facilitator for the National Union of Community Forestry Development Committees.

Turning over a new chief

During Liberia’s civil wars, Merab co-owned the Liberia Wood Management Corporation, a logging company that operated near the Sierra Leonean border. War crimes prosecutors said the company was used to funnel weapons and other support to rebels in Sierra Leone who were allied with the government of former Liberian president Charles Taylor; Taylor was in 2012 convicted of war crimes charges.

In a recent statement to the Liberian press, Merab called the allegations against himself “fallacies”.

But Merab’s links to illegal logging continued after the end of Liberia’s civil war in 2003. In 2012, local watchdog groups revealed that nearly one-quarter of the country’s land mass had been handed out to logging companies via legal loopholes, often through the use of forged titles. A company partially owned by Merab was one of the biggest beneficiaries of the scandal.

Merab did not respond to a request for comment sent via text by Mongabay.

Since the early 1990s, Merab has helmed the Liberia Timber Association, a lobby group that advocates on behalf of the country’s logging industry. In that role, he’s been an outspoken opponent of conservation agreements with foreign donors that require Liberia to preserve its rainforests in exchange for aid payments.

In 2017, he called a high-profile $150 million agreement between Liberia and the government of Norway, intended to curb deforestation, “bullshit”, and described it as a “neo-colonial” attempt to crush Liberia’s timber industry.

What next for Liberia’s rainforests?

Merab takes the helm of the FDA during a perilous time for Liberia’s rainforests. After the end of its civil war, local activists pushed to reform the regulations governing its timber industry, which had been a major source of funds for rebel groups. New laws were passed by Liberia’s legislature that established strict procedures for tracing timber shipments and boosted the involvement of local communities in forest management.

But Liberian advocates say those reforms suffered significant breakdowns during Weah’s administration.

“There was a process of legality verification ensuring transparency and openness of forest management, and during this period it was eroded,” said Yiah from the Sustainable Development Institute. “You couldn’t see information coming from the sector, there was a lot of corruption, and a lot of illegalities were reported in community forestry.”

Liberia contains nearly half of West Africa’s remaining Upper Guinea rainforest. These forests are home to a significant number of threatened and endemic species, including western chimpanzees, pygmy hippos and pangolins.

Timber comprises only a small fraction of Liberia’s exports, overshadowed by other raw commodities like iron ore and gold. But logging advocates say the industry creates rural jobs and is an important source of foreign exchange. Historically, the appeal of quick cash through timber exports has long been a strong draw in a country where poverty is widespread, and that’s led to rule-breaking throughout its history.

This year, a long-awaited review of Liberia’s timber industry that was required by the country’s agreement with Norway was finally made public. Carried out by Forest Trends, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit consultancy, the review described wide-ranging illegalities. Of the 11 timber contracts reviewed by the group, not a single one was found to be in compliance with Liberian law.

According to the report’s authors, FDA officials refused to grant them access to internal documents and systems where harvesting data was recorded.

“The [review] concludes that the lack of documentation is indicative of a real lack of compliance,” they wrote.

Ozinga, the researcher and advocate, told Mongabay she wasn’t surprised by the review’s findings.

“I think it’s fair to say that almost all of the timber going out of Liberia is still illegal,” she said. “And it’s not really benefiting the country at all. So [Boakai] has to really start at the beginning there.”

How Liberia’s rainforests — and the communities that live in them — will fare during the Boakai era will now largely ride on Merab’s leadership at the FDA. Liberian advocates say they hope he’ll enforce the laws on the books, however he might feel about them.

“If you are appointing a Managing Director, that person should have interest in the communities and recognize their worth,” said Loretta Pope-Kai, executive director of the Foundation for Community Initiatives. “They have to ensure the laws are implemented — we don’t want a repeat of Mike Doryen in the forestry sector.”

Note: An earlier version of this story stated that Mike Doryen was the Managing Director of Liberia’s FDA from 2014-2023. It has been updated to correctly reflect that he began his tenure in 2018.

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Banner image: Workers with logs, River Cess County, Liberia, 2013. Image by Flore de Preneuf/PROFOR via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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