Year after year, the small, densely forested west African nation of Liberia is facing ever more extreme impacts of the climate crisis, including floods and droughts that wreak havoc for farmers and coastal erosion driven by rising sea levels.
“In May this year, I stood under a coconut tree by the sea in the city of Greenville, to mark the groundbreaking of a new coastal protection scheme,” says Emmanuel Yarkpawolo, executive director of Liberia’s Environmental Protection Agency. “When I returned to the same spot in September, just a few months later, the coconut tree was gone because of the coastal erosion we are seeing. That’s how bad things are in our country.”
