Statement by Dr. Emmanuel K. Urey Yarkpawolo
Executive Director of the EPA
Program Marking the Official Closing of 2024
Held at EPA Headquarters on Dec. 20, 2024

• The Chair and members of the EPA Policy Council.
• The Chair and members of the EPA Governing Board.
• My able and supportive Deputy, Hon. Dweh Boley, Sr.
• EPA Managers and Hardworking Staff.
• Government Officials.
• Cllr. Tiawan Saye Gongloe.
• Mrs. Loretta Pope-Kai and members of Civil Society.
• Our International Partners.
• Members of the Press.
• My hardworking and caring wife, Mrs. Vivian Urey Yarkpawolo.
• Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.

Let us first extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to the Omnipotent
God who has given us this day. Thank you for accepting our invitation to grace this occasion of the official year-end closing program of the Environmental Protection Agency. Under the leaderships of the
Governing Board, the Policy Council and the President, this Agency promises to be a great place to work and enforce the Environmental laws of Liberia.
For 2024 in review, I like to show you the baseline reports of how we met the EPA, reforms efforts we have instituted, and the overall progress from those reform efforts. I also like to showcase to you our 5-year strategic plan that highlights our vision for the next five years under the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development.
We got appointed in an acting position by the President on Friday, February 16, 2024. On Monday, February 19, 2024, we declared our assets at the LACC before taking over the office that day. We received the Agency Status notes from the outgoing administration. The status notes highlighted the following for the reporting years January 2018 to December 2023:

1. Eight policy and regulatory instruments were validated
2. The EPA had 8 departments
3. EPA main operational Account Balance as of December 2023 was 17,723.54 USD
4. There was no outstanding legal issues
5. The EPA morale was low due to low salary for employees
6. There was limited budgetary support from the Government of Liberia
7. There was poor working environment including dilapidated buildings
   

We compared the Agency Status Notes with the Joint Presidential Transition Team (JPTT) Report. The JPTT report indicated a sharp contrast with the Agency Status Notes Report. It indicated:

1. Only 20% of the 5-Years Strategic Plan covering the period was completed.
2. That the bank statements from January 2018 to December 2023 were not available.
3. That financial report covering January 2018 to December 2023 was not available.
4. That many other important pieces of information requested were not available.

Policy Council Members and our Board of Directors, we compared both the Agency Status Notes and the JPTT report to what we found at the EPA to determine a baseline of the institution as we met it. We found the following:

1. The actual bank account we inherited at the end February 2024 was $325.00 USD
2. We met an EPA where employees’ morale was at an all-time low
3. We found a divided workforce, some of whom were wrongfully dismissed
4. We saw a very deplorable bus for the employees and many damaged vehicles
5. We met two dilapidated EPA buildings (main building and annex)
6. We met lack of compliance on the part of some companies
7. As a result of the above, we met an EPA with a bad reputation and extremely low public trust

While we were trying to deal with these issues, we got sued at the Supreme Court. The case took almost two months and after winning, we got restored on April 20, 2024. After a careful vetting process, as required by the Act creating the EPA, we were appointed by the President based on recommendation from the Policy Council on May 16, 2024.
Members of the Governing Board and the Policy Council, the co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs once said “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” This is what we are doing to do at the EPA.

We are building a team of professionals that once our work is completed, will be among the best in Liberia.
To understand the situation at the EPA, we created two boxes. We labelled one ‘Grievance box’ and the other ‘Innovation box’. The grievance box provides employees with a platform to voice their concerns in a bid to resolve workplace issues while the innovation box helps harness transformative ideas for improving the EPA. What is your mind? What are the things that are bad at the EPA, we asked the employees.

We want to know what is on your mind. Therefore, write and put your grievances
in the grievance box. We told them that writing their names was not required as we were only interested in the information and not the names of those giving the information. Similarly, we encourage them to put their ideas of improving the EPA in the Innovation Box.

We gathered lots of valuable information from our boxes. If we saw five or more comments on the same subject, we looked into that complaint.
Our employees spoke and we listened to them. They complained about old bus that broke down frequently. They spoke about the misplacement of staff as well as travel opportunities only to a few select staff.

They alerted us about some employees that hardly came to work but were taking pay regularly. They complained and in some cases with specific details on instances of corruption that were robbing the EPA and the government of Liberia thousands of dollars.
These valuable pieces of information helped us to reform the EPA. We conducted an investigation into the dismissal of officials and acted on recommendations to restore them to their positions as they were wrongly dismissed.

We made some changes at the management levels placing people in their rightful positions without cutting down their salaries. We conducted spot checks to ensure workers were coming to work and
leaving on time. We turned the Senior Management Team into a budget committee. Every Monday at 9am, when we have our Senior Management meeting, the comptroller shows the weekly expenditures, income and bank balances to all senior managers.

We approved the Internal Auditors work plan giving them unhindered access to all EPA assets. We opened
travel opportunities to all staff based on qualifications and nature of work. In fact, the first travel opportunity we had as Executive Director of the EPA was given to the Gender Coordinator, who had not had any travel opportunities for the last 5 years she worked for the EPA. We subjected the procurement process at the EPA to scrutiny based on Liberian laws, policies and regulation, ensuring that all procurement requirements were met.

Members of the Policy Council and the Governing Board, These reforms efforts and many more that I cannot say due to limited time yielded the following for the period 2024:

1. We established four new county offices and deployed environmental Inspectors and awareness officers in Grand Cape Mount, Gbarpolu, Rivercess and Montserrado counties and are currently in the process of opening 4 additional offices in Grand Kru, River Gee, Maryland and Sinoe counties.
2. We conducted 1463 compliance inspections during the period 2024.
   
3. We investigated a total of 198 complaints brought to the attention of the EPA.
4. We received 318 ESIA applications, held 36 ESIA sittings, conducted 6 stakeholders’ consultations and issued 214 Environmental Permits.
5. We instituted 60 compliance notices amounting to halt orders, restoration orders, fines and shutdowns.
6. We developed, validated and the Board and Policy Council approved 11 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, just to name a few.
7. We imposed more than one million dollars fines on companies violating the environmental laws of Liberia. Fines imposed are directly paid to central government revenue.
8. We developed a work plan and a procurement plan.
   
9. We purchased two new buses for our employees, one vehicle for our deputy and one vehicle for our compliance department.
10. We conducted two policy council meetings and two governing board meetings.
11. We hosted a number of trainings including bringing 20 young scientists from West Africa to launch the West African Ocean Acidification Network.
12. We opened a climate smart Laboratory at the University of Liberia where scientific data will be analyzed to support informed decision making.
13. We completed an EPA office at the Freeport of Monrovia, scheduled to open in January 2025.
14. As of January 2025, the EPA will be relocating to a modern building in Mamba Point. The building will have facilities that include computerized signing in and singing out for workers as well
    as CCTV.
15. With funding support from climate financing, we are building coastal defense to prevent West Point from washing away. We are also building coastal defense in Greenville Sinoe County. We are
    building meteorological center for Liberia.

Fellow Liberians,
The EPA made significant gains at the international levels. We participated in all of the parties of the conferences that yielded fruitful results. These include:

1. The signing and, in some instances, ratification of 8 international environmental agreements that will boost the country’s efforts in combating numerous health and environmental issues.
2. We signed an MoU with Cambridge University to provide 150 scholarships for online learning in the area of climate education that are worth more than 250,000 British Pounds.
3. In Cali, Colombia, we participated in COP16 negotiations 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.
4. 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.
5. The EPA under the watchful eyes of our Deputy Director, led a team to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where 12 billion was promised to address land degradation and drought across 80 vulnerable
   countries.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Liberians,
The Secretariat of the National Climate Change Steering Committee is housed at the EPA. Under the auspices of the National Climate Change Steering Committee, the Secretariat is responsible for mainstreaming climate change activities into the national development agenda. The
Secretariat achieved the following:

1. We signed a Letter of Agreement with the Coalition of Rainforest Nations (CfRN) to provide technical capacity to enable the Government of Liberia to get ready to participate in the global carbon market in the next 12-24 months.
2. We developed the road map for the operation of the National Climate Change Secretariat
3. We developed TOR to recruit consultants that will develop the carbon policy, which is part of the readiness program.
4. We conducted 4 meetings of the NCCSC successfully.

Fellow Liberians, Yogi said “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” But we can only know where we are going if we plan ahead and carefully. This is why we have developed the EPA 5 years strategic plan with a cost of 32 million dollars. Our 5-year (2025-2029) aligned with the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development Pillar 5 which addresses Environmental Sustainability with
a Strategic Goal to promote responsible management of natural resources, protect biodiversity, and enhance resilience to environmental changes, while fulfilling the country Nationally Determined Contributions and supporting economic growth and improving the quality of life for citizens.
We will officially be launching this plan in January 2025.

As I speak to you, we have already developed our 2025 work plan based on our strategic plan. This plan cost about 5 million dollars to implement.
Although this may seem a relatively huge amount, our collective efforts, over the last 8 months, are a testament that more can be done with adequate funding. The new EPA, we are honored to lead, is an institution built on trust, commitment, respect and teamwork. Honorable Policy Council Members and Members of the Board,

Fellow Liberians
Amidst the success of the EPA in just a few months that I have listed above, there are challenges. Liberia owed nearly all Multilateral Environmental Agreements. These arrears are causing the country to lose
its voting rights at international gatherings and is not good at all. Can you imagine, Honorable Board members, I will be sitting in a meeting representing Liberia and the big dash board will be showing all the
countries that have paid their dues including neighboring countries, like Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Ivory Coast and Liberia will have zero payment and I have no big say in the discussion. It is embarrassing to say the least.
Even this year, we have to manage to pay over 3,000 Euros to allow Liberia to participate and get some donations worth thousands of dollars from the IAEA. For this reason, we budgeted 150,000.00 to start paying our dues to international conventions in the 2025 budget and we are appealing to the Legislature to approve this amount. Other challenges include:

1. Limited environmental awareness among the population.
2. Limited staff and limited presence of EPA across the country.
3. Limited budgetary support and inadequate logistical support.
4. Interferences with EPA work in conducting environmental compliance Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, EPA will continue to be an effective voice for the protection and sustainable management of Liberia’s natural resources; fully committed to leading and working with our local and international partners to achieve better outcomes across all environmental issues. We thank our international partners, especially UNDP, Conservation International, the Canadian based Novasphere, Food and Agriculture Organization, USAID, the European Union and many others that we cannot name all due to limited time for supporting our work.
   We reaffirm our commitment to drive transformative climate actions, promote sustainable production and work relentlessly to achieve a clean, safe and healthy environment for this and succeeding generations. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous and Green 2025!

Thank you.