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 2014-2023. 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…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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