— As stakeholders hold crucial discussion
Stakeholders drafting Liberia’s carbon market roadmap have concluded a one-day meeting, focused on carbon ownership, carbon generation, benefit sharing, and types of markets. The meeting was held at the University of Liberia Climate Action Lab.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is leading the country’s carbon policy and law to enable the sale of carbon credits.
This initiative is spearheaded by the National Climate Change Steering Committee (NCCSC), which mandated the EPA to develop a Liberian carbon market law that would allow the country to trade carbon credits by conserving forests and mangroves, providing a livelihood for those who live in the forest, for national development, and for the global good.
Carbon markets aim to make emitting greenhouse gases more expensive, incentivizing businesses and governments to reduce their emissions through projects and initiatives as an alternative to avoiding forest loss and degradation. These markets allow entities to buy and sell permits that allow them to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. Others who can reduce emissions cheaply can sell their excess permits, while those who find it more expensive can buy them.
Liberia plans to conserve its forests, mangroves, and oceans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sell credits to wealthier nations and companies. The funds will be used for national development. But the law will define if the community that owns the law will own the carbon or the government.
Dr. Emmanuel Yarkapalo Urey, EPA’s Executive said at the meeting that having a carbon policy and law in place will safely guide the country in leveraging opportunities in the business and prevent the country from being defrauded and cheated.
“You can’t sell if you don’t know what you have. You will be cheated, and you know we have been cheated in the mineral sector. We have been cheated badly. How can an investor come, and you say go find the mineral?” he asked. “So, we don’t want to make that mistake with the forest resources or relating to carbon. That is why we want to make sure we calculate the Forest Reference Emissions Level we have the right policy.”
Stakeholders who were at the meeting
According to him, the agency has already been receiving a lot of proposals on the carbon market. “We are under pressure in terms of the carbon market. Right now, I have more than nine proposals. Because we don’t want to open this market so foolishly. We don’t have any framework in place. How do we define our national policy relating to carbon, forest carbon?”
The Forest Reference Level (FREL) helps a country to measure emission reductions from deforestation and forest degradation and removals from sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. As a key component of national forest monitoring systems, FRELs provide a baseline against which emission reductions can be measured and subsequent results-based payments can be made.
Z. Elijah Whapoe, NCCS Coordinator, said after a ministerial meeting, the EPA was tasked with developing a national climate change policy and carbon market law, while the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) was mandated to lead on the Forest Reference Emissions Level (FREL).
“We held an inception meeting for the development of the carbon policy on July 3rd, 2024. The government of Liberia held a closed-door meeting to decide how to move about the carbon program in Liberia, and it was at the highest level of the ministerial council meeting on carbon under the auspices of the National Climate Change Steering Committee.”
According to him, the meeting was held at the Ministry of Agriculture. In that meeting, the workload was distributed. The Climate Change Secretariat at the EPA was mandated to drive the process of developing our national framework that includes the carbon policy and how Liberia intends to drive the carbon program in Liberia. The FDA was mandated to lead on the FREL.
“Upon that mandate, we thought of working. Our intention was to just go ahead and develop the law, and gracefully, we started socializing the information of the roadmap and we were advised by legal experts to begin with the policy,” he said.
E. Abrahman Tumbey, Head of UNDP’s Green and Inclusive Growth, UNDP, voiced the importance of having a carbon framework that can help the country to benefit from the market, with clear objectives. “This is an important initiative that has been a long time coming. We all recognize the need. The aspect of developing a framework is very important, so we think this is the right direction,” he said.
