Sierra Leone’s Gola Rainforest remains a centre of contention as the local community here plan to take their chief to court next week over a controversial 50-year land lease to a mining company.

The Gola Forest is bisected by several of Sierra Leone's major rivers. Credit: Courtesy of David Zeller/Gola Programme

Mining companies have long coveted the land here for its iron ore potential as deposits in Bagla Hills are estimated to be worth 150 billion dollars.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that because of this natural resource, Sierra Leone’s small economy will have one of the biggest growth rates in the world at a staggering 51.4 percent in 2012, on the back of legal iron ore activity and exports.

But the community of Tonika remains furious about the deal.

“The chief is guardian of the land – he can’t sell it,” Alfred Williams, a member of the Tonkia Descendants Association, told IPS. Williams says the local community knew nothing of the sale until it appeared in the local media following Sable Mining’s statement to the London Stock Exchange.

Sable Mining issued a statement in May announcing its purchase of an 80 percent interest in Red Rock Mining, which had apparently bought the lease for 206 square kilometres of Bagla Hills from the local Tonkia Paramount Chief.

But the lease has become even more controversial as the country’s President Ernest Bai Koroma declared the 75,000-hectare rainforest a protected area and a national park in December. The forest type is one of the world’s 25 global bio-diversity hotspots.

The government has also launched an investigation into what they describe as an illegal land sale.

Kate Garnett, from the government’s Forestry Conservation and Wildlife Management Unit, says Bagla Hills “is a case of Sable Mining having been deceived by a local man.” The government issued a statement saying that any sale of Bagla Hills, as well as mining in the rainforest, is illegal.

The government’s Director of Mines Jonathan Sharkar said that the Ministry of Mineral Resources has never dealt with Sable Mining Africa.

“Sable Mining have never applied for a mining concession in this country – we have no dealings with them,” Sharkar says. He also points out that any land rights are also only surface rights – any minerals are owned by the government.

A Sable Mining spokesperson, who did not want to be named, confirmed that they do not hold a current mining licence for Bagla Hills.

Sable Mining would not comment on the land rights and referred IPS to their statements from earlier this year. These claim land registration documents proving ownership of Bagla Hills by Sable Mining have been filed at the land registry. The government, however, denies this.

But the case still dominates talk shows in this West African country. It led to a local demonstration, and in September the country’s Resident Minister William Juana Smith requested journalists refrain from reporting stories that had “the potential of creating conflict.” He had threatened that serious action would be taken against anyone doing so.

But the issue remains volatile as it concerns the livelihoods of the community. The Tonika community once made a good living mining gold in the forest, selling timber, farming and hunting. This will now stop because of the lease, says Williams.

“While the chief gets rich, people in Tonkia are left poor and aggrieved, without schools, hospitals and jobs. Young people need work – some of us say through mining, some say through the Gola reserve,” says Williams.

Augustine Sannoh, from the civil society movement, East Kenema, says that the chief has mobilised a small band of pro-mining individuals.

“He continues to galvanise support – even though there’s a court case to answer. The problem is that local people struggle to see the financial benefits of Gola Rainforest National Park. You can now only take firewood and fish for personal consumption. You can make honey or rattan products to sell, but these have a lower economic value than hunting and mining. It’s a big local dispute still.”

Williams also says the Gola Forest Programme (GFP) that manages the national park is yet to help people find alternative livelihoods as promised.

GFP’s Guy Marris denies this.

“We’ve supported with roads, bridges, culverts, and medical centres,” he says. Marris says the GFP recognises that providing alternative livelihoods to the community is a key strategy to forest preservation.

Plans are underway for various projects including carbon trading “which could earn tens of millions dollars,” as well as small enterprise development, and eco-tourism.

“It’s a process, it’ll take time, but in the meantime, we are mandated to represent government – no mining is permitted by individuals or by companies,” says Marris.

However, Garnett says communities still believe that mining will transform their lives.

“There are many examples where only environmental destruction has been left behind,” Garnett says.

She says the Forestry division was planning to take communities on visits to mined sites, “to show how mining can leave little positive community impact.”

“The law says no mining and we agree with conservation for now, but I have to say people want mining here because it is a quick way of getting money. No one wants to be poor, everyone wants to be rich,” Musa Taimeh, chairperson of the Tonkia Descendants Association, says.

Natalie Ashworth, from watchdog group Global Witness, says that people have an unrealistic expectation of what mining can offer them.

“People think it is going to change everything and provide thousands of jobs, which of course it is not. I doubt Sable Mining would have acquired Red Rock if they did not think they would be able to apply for a mining license at some point. As long as Sierra Leone is poor and has so few options, Gola Rainforest will always be threatened,” she says.  

Excerpt:

Environmental damage in the Niger Delta. Credit: Dulue Mbachu/IRIN

By Meena Bhandari and - -
FREETOWN, Nov 17 2011 (IPS)

There is a new oil rush off the coast of West Africa. But there are fears that the sector is not sufficiently regulated, and watchdog groups are raising concerns about transparency and governance in the region.

Anticipation is building in Sierra Leone after African Petroleum, an oil and gas exploration company focused on offshore West Africa, said they would begin drilling in the Sierra Leone-Liberia Basin next year after oil was discovered here in 2009. Civil society groups in Sierra Leone say they are just catching up with the oil discovery. “It’s very new – we’re still learning,” says Mohamed Toray of the National Movement for Justice and Development..

He says the country’s Petroleum Act, which was guided by agreements with oil companies, was rushed through as an emergency bill by the president’s office in July, and few people were consulted.

“Government agreements with oil companies guided the wording of the law. But, the law should have guided agreements with oil companies,” he says.

He also says Sierra Leone has a lot to learn from Ghana’s government, which engaged with civil society and the public when oil was found off its shores in 2007.

He says lessons can also be learned from Nigeria’s troubled history with oil. A recent report by the European Union Parliament says varying figures of 93 to 716 barrels a day were lost in Nigeria due to conflict, based on best and worst case scenarios.

Now Liberia is garnering attention – with expectations high that oil will be found soon. Major U.S. oil giants Chevron and Anadarko Petroleum Corp (one of the world’s largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies) are all searching hard in Liberia’s waters. The relatively unknown African Petroleum is also conducting explorations.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the West African Coastal Province – which includes Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – has an estimated 3,200 million barrels of oil and 23,629 billion cubic feet of gas.

Translated into hard cash, that is hundreds of billions of dollars. “But, nobody knows for sure what it’s worth,” says Natalie Ashworth from Global Witness, the campaigning organisation that uncovered links to how the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia were fuelled by natural resources.

“Anadarko, the company that found reserves in Sierra Leone’s waters, is apparently keeping its data close to its chest,” she says.

Oil discoveries should be a boon to this region – boosting gains made from the war recovery efforts with millions of donor dollars, and increasing foreign investor confidence.

Liberia’s current GDP per capita is a minute 247 dollars, and Sierra Leone’s is 325 dollars – so any oil find would make a serious impact in two of the poorest countries in the world. Both Liberia and Sierra Leone rank amongst the worst places in the world for mothers to give birth, for example, despite both burgeoning with natural resources.

The implication is that a lack of transparency means a loss of potential revenue, and possibly depriving these economies of desperately needed social spending.

Liberia’s oil could turn out to be a blessing for some, and a curse for most, unless the government commits to an open reform process, says Global Witness. Oil exploration began in August off the coast of the West African country. However, the international organisation says that unless the country cleans up its oil sector, they will not be ready for oil.

In a September report by Global Witness, the watchdog organisation says it has already uncovered discrepancies, bad practice and even corruption in Liberia.

“Our investigations have shown that, even before a discovery is made, there are deep-seated problems in Liberia’s oil sector: government officials and at least one company have paid bribes, contracts have been awarded illegally, and companies with little experience in the oil sector have received concessions,” says Ashworth.

The group claims that a government agency paid bribes to the legislature so that oil contracts would be ratified. It also found the sector was not independently regulated.

Global Witness says that reforms in Liberia, like passing the groundbreaking Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative law that publishes extractive industry contracts and revenue data to improve resource governance, have not gone far enough in practice.

Global Witness goes as far as to say that Liberia is “not ready for oil” with its current governance and lack of transparency and needs wider reforms in its resource sector before people can actually benefit from any new finds.

Indeed, the history of oil in Africa has so far been a tumultuous one. A recent EU report found that the negative impacts of the oil industry in sub-Saharan Africa were a major concern, for the health and livelihoods of local communities.

It also stressed the need for better accountability, transparency and governance, and came hot on the heels of the United Nations findings highlighting the impact of oil spills in the Niger Delta.

The Niger Delta is said to be one of the most polluted sites in the world with oil spills over the last 50 years, having a devastating impact on human and wild life. A clean up is estimated to take 30 years at a cost of around one billion dollars, according to the U.N.

Meanwhile, Ian Gary of Oxfam International says the oil transparency and governance situation in Ghana at least is stronger than in the case of its neighbours, citing the fact that petroleum agreements are posted on the Ministry of Energy’s website.

“There were months of debate with heavy input from the public and civil society to develop the Petroleum Revenue Management Act,” he says. Ghana also recently inaugurated the Public Interest and Accountability Committee, a civil society watchdog required by the new law.

Despite this progress, Oxfam International says constant vigilance from civil society will be needed to ensure laws are upheld in practice.  

Excerpt:

Three-year-old David bolts up from his feverish stooper as a needle pricks his thumb, producing a tiny bead of blood. He looks down horrified but is too exhausted to cry and falls back into his mother’s lap as the blood is wiped away

Juane K. Nabieu, a community health officer in the district's main Peripheral Health Unit. Credit: Meena Bhandari/IPS

Juane K. Nabieu, a community health officer in the district’s main Peripheral Health Unit (PHU) drops the specimen of blood onto a strip. Within seconds two fine lines appear and David’s mother Naomi Sam is told that her son has malaria.

Malaria is endemic in the country – it is one of the biggest killers of children. David is lucky. He is treated with the last batch of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies (ACT) that Nabieu has just collected from the neighbouring district government drug storeroom.

But poor record keeping, wastage and theft may be responsible for the loss of a quarter of vital aid drugs that have gone missing, denying other children like three-year-old David the chance of survival.

The regular UNICEF stocktake found a preliminary figure of 25 percent of the aid was unaccounted for, UNICEF said in a statement on Jun. 14. The drugs are thought to include vital life-saving drugs like ACT.

A UNICEF representative said that the internal stock take began at the end of 2010, and has just been completed. It reviewed stocks from the rural health posts across the country in a bottom-up check of drugs.

It also follows reports from district hospitals across the country and PHUs about an ongoing shortage of ACT, vital in the treatment of malaria. At the Khailahun PHU there are only two more packets of ACT left – serving 156 PHUs. When the remaining doses run out, Nabieu, will refer his patients to the government district hospital.

“Most of the people who come here will not be able to afford the ACT sold privately – they rely on the free drugs,” he says sitting behind a desk with an array of medicine bottles all lined up in front of him. “You can see we have many drugs, but the supply of fast moving essential ones like ACT always arrives in spurts – every month there is a shortage, and every month there will be people who suffer because of it.”

Sierra Leone’s government took a massive step when it announced last April that health care for children under five and pregnant women would be free. The Free Health Care Initiative is 90 percent funded by international donors like the UK’s Department for International Trade and Development, the African Development Bank, UNFPA and 10 percent is funded by the government of Sierra Leone.

In Khailahun district, drugs that were given as aid by the Global Fund and UNICEF are reported to be found in private drugs shops and sold by street market traders.

“We have patients who come from neighbouring Liberia, which puts a strain on our resources, but the drugs in the local market may also be drugs that have come from Liberia or Guinea – the aid that comes into West Africa is generic and that makes it easy to sell anywhere,” Nabieu explains.

On the other side of Khailahun town, at the district hospital, things are no better. In the paediatric ward, tightly packed with mothers and babies all eerily quiet, nurse Alice Mansaray has a stack of paperwork and a new baby with complications from malaria to admit.

“Most children come to us with severe anaemia or convulsions – sometimes their mothers suppress their child’s fever with paracetamol, when there are no free stocks of ACT in their PHUs, and they can’t afford the private drugs.

“When I run out of ACTs I send them to a private drug store. They have to go because they can’t see their children die. We have seen more cases of malaria and more children with complications,” she says as she holds up a strip of ACT.

Though the government’s hospital monitors say malaria cases have decreased compared to last year in Khailahun, there is no record kept of how many patients come back with complications. There is also no record of those who were entitled to free drugs, or who had to purchase them from the private sector because of the shortage of aid.

The civil society organisation, Health for All Coalition (HFAC), implemented a monitoring system, parallel to the government’s. Alhassan Kamara at HFAC estimates that 45 to 50 percent of the aid that comes in disappears finding its way to the market – though no survey has been conducted to substantiate this.

“Our monitors travel in drug delivery trucks. We insist community and district hospital representatives receive the consignment.” This has reduced the “leakages” Kamara calls the thefts. “Transportation from district to the PHU needs to be strengthened. There is less transparency, and scope to sell on route.”

This is not the first time such irregularities have been discovered in Sierra Leone. In 2008 a BBC report discovered UNICEF’s malaria drugs in Kono (Eastern Province) were being re-sold in private pharmacies.

“If there was such mass pilfering, the system would collapse,” says Dr Amara Jambai, director of Disease Prevention and Control at the ministry of health and sanitation. “The community are very active and watch supplies very closely.”

Jambai admits that the capacity of the government is too weak to deliver the drugs to each PHU. “The cause of the shortage is not because there are thefts, but because demand is great, and the system is new.”

The district hospitals in Khailahun, Pujehan in the South, and Bo in Central Sierra Leone, say that when they have approached Freetown for ACT, they still have supply issues. Pujehan hospital said they had not received a delivery since February – though they had a small supply remaining of ACT, other essentials like antibiotics and paracetamol had long been unavailable.

Mahimbo Mdoe, UNICEF country representative says that UNICEF is due to take over the operation to run the logistics of the distribution of Free Health care drugs and supplies themselves. “We are in the process of hiring transport companies who will be responsible for the distribution of drugs and supplies from the District Medical Stores to the peripheral health units.”

“A year ago 80 percent of people didn’t go to the doctors because of the cost. Sierra Leone is a fragile state. The numbers of people accessing the aid for the first time is an important step forward,” Mdoe said.

Meanwhile, Naomi Sam says that she could not have gone to the private drug store to buy the ACT that has just saved David’s life if it were unavailable, because “I have no money,” she says simply. She knows that coming to the PHU means that David will get free treatment. But, the 20 or so women with sick babies waiting outside may not be so lucky today.

(*The story contained a number of errors. The original story stated that vital aid drugs have gone missing from the central government warehouse, they had in fact gone missing between districts and PHUs. Also, the Free Health Care Initiative is not funded by UNICEF but by international donors which operate through UNICEF and other United Nations agencies. UNICEF will be taking over the operation to run the logistics of the distribution of Free Health care drugs and supplies themselves and will not manage the central warehouse.)