MONROVIA – Since its creation in 2002, the EPA, though committed to fulfilling its mandate, remained challenged in many areas, including funding and human resource development gaps, as well as a vast infrastructural deficit.

The combined impact has severely hampered the Agency’s ability to deliver on its mandate both locally and within global environmental arena.However, the situation at the EPA is now taking a turn for the better under the leadership of Dr. Emmanuel K. Urey Yarkpawolo, a young man who rose to prominence by defying all odds as a refugee, farmer, fisherman to become the face of the successes that are being experienced at the country’s lead environmental agency.

The EPA is being gradually transformed into a sterling example of a worldclass institution, from one that endured serious lack of compliance with companies, amid other issues such as a divided workforce, dilapidated buildings, low staff morale and low public trust.Being a man of lesser words and bending more on actions, Dr. Yarkpawolo has, within a relatively short period of time, instituted a series of reforms at the once declining EPA, now yielding real-time results.Within a year of his ascendency to the EPA leadership, Dr. Yarpkawolo influenced significant turnaround in staff morale by ensuring the reinstitution of wrongfully dismissed staffs, providing travel opportunities to all staff based on qualifications and nature of work, paying staff on time, effecting changes at management levels by placing people in their rightful positions without affecting their salaries, and ensuring that employees got put in time for the pay they received.

And the first time in five years, the Gender Coordinator was afforded a travel opportunity which Executive Director Yarkpawolo turned down to allow other staff to benefit.The Yarkpawolo administration has also made landmark achievements geared towards strengthening the EPA in effectively carrying out its fiduciary duties. To date, since taking over in 2024, Dr. Yarkpawolo and his team have established four new county offices and deployed environmental Inspectors and awareness officers in Grand Cape Mount, Gbarpolu, Rivercess and Montserrado counties .

The administration is also currently in the process of opening 4 additional offices in Grand Kru, River Gee, Maryland and Sinoe counties; 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.

Being a uncompromising and virtuous leader, he has instituted 60 compliance notices including halt orders, restoration orders, fines and shutdown. He hastened the developing and validating of the Board and Policy Council to approved11 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.

The Yarkpawolo administration has imposed more than one million dollars fines on companies violating the environmental laws of Liberia, with the fines paid directly to central government revenue. Concerned about staff and employee welfare, he recently also purchased two new buses for its employees, one vehicle for one of his deputies, and one vehicle for the EPA department.

He ensured that the Agency has also two policy council meetings and two governing board meetings, hosted several 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, and he also completed an EPA office at the Freeport of Monrovia, scheduled to open in January 2025.This January, the EPA will be relocating to a modern building in Mamba Point, a building with modern facilities, including computerized signing in and singing out for workers as well as CCTV.

According to Dr. Yarkpawolo, the EPA is currently building coastal defense to prevent West Point from washing away; and is building coastal defense in Greenville Sinoe County, as well as a meteorological center for Liberia, all from climate change funding.On the global front, the Yarkpawolo administration has participated in significant conferences that resulted to the ratification of eight international environmental agreements that will boost the country’s efforts in combating numerous health and environmental issues.

The EPA also 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. The Agency as well participated in COP16 negotiations in Cali, Columbia 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.

The Executive Director second a team under the watchful eyes of its Deputy Director to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where US$12 billion was promised to address land degradation and drought across 80 vulnerable countries.

For these and many other reasons which are uncountable for this publication, The Analyst recognizes the EPA as a sterling giant that is transforming lives and impacting the environment.