This is the first state of the environment (SOE) report for Liberia. As required by the Environmental Protection and Management Law, the report should be produced after every five years. The state of the environment report is a guide for development planning and decision-making and is an important reference for environmental education and awareness. It is expected to serve as a monitoring tool for measuring progress against stated development goals. . Within the environmental domain, there are serious data gaps related to Liberia’s biodiversity, mountains, solid waste management, and greenhouse gas emissions, among others. This needs to be urgently addressed so as to improve subsequent editions of the SOE.
This report is divided into four parts: 1) environment and economic development, 2) the state and trend of the natural resources, 3) the human environment, and 4) environmental governance. These are designed to reflect the inter-linkages between environment, development, security and good governance in Liberia and are the broad areas that Liberians will have to think about and act on during the process of reconstructing their country.