The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its Strategic Plan covering the period 2022—2026. Making comments after the validation of the document, EPA’s Executive Director, Prof. Wilson K. Tarpeh, informed newsmen that “the Strategic Plan articulates our corporate aspirations for the next five years (2022–2026) and establishes a program to achieve them”.
Prof. Tarpeh said, “It is a roadmap—an embodiment of deliberate choices to effectively attend to the environmental issues in our country, not only for our current generation but more so for the well-being of future generations. It is also a commitment to contribute to addressing key issues, such as climate change, of the international environmental community. This plan also envelopes a deliberate choice to align the PAPD with climate change actions that are embedded in Liberia’s framework document in the fight against global warming.”
To ensure the participation and involvement of independent technical experts, Prof. Tarpeh disclosed that the EPA has hired the services of Subah Belleh Associates, a renowned Management Consultancy with over 38 years of industry experience, to facilitate the preparation of the document.
The release of the five-year Strategic Plan follows the publication of the State of the Environment Report (SOER) in July 2021 and the successful completion, submission and approval of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in August 2021.
The SOER is a national report that gives the conditions of the environment and the effort of every member country the world over to improve the environment through climate change resilience and environmentally sensitive mitigation and adaptation actions and measures. These reports are generally required every five years, and the last time Liberia prepared the report was in 2006.
The NDC is a required plan under the 2015 Paris Agreement, which outlines a country’s ambition in reducing greenhouse gases (GHG). The last EPA Strategic Plan expired in 2018.
Prof. Tarpeh has meanwhile called on all employees of the EPA to work assiduously in ensuring the successful implementation of the plan. He specifically charged all task managers in particular to make copies of the relevant sections of the plan and ensure that each and every employee under their direction is familiar with and committed to the orderly pursuit of the plan.
