Silas Kpanan'Ayoung Siakor

Silas Kpanan'Ayoung Siakor (* 1970 in Liberia ) is a Liberian environmentalist and human rights activist . For his fight to preserve the Liberian rainforests , he founded the Sustainable Development Institute of Liberia .

Life

Born in Liberia in 1970, Silas Siakor has been working as a forest ranger in Liberia's tropical rainforest since the 1990s. During the Second Liberian Civil War , the foreign exchange accounts of the Liberian government were blocked by Charles Taylor due to international sanctions. From then on, Taylor used illegal trading transactions ( blood diamonds , gold sales) to get foreign currency. Another source of income was trading in tropical timber, for which Taylor sold concessions to a timber trading company from Malaysia . The overexploitation of the tropical rainforest that began with it also had consequences for the indigenous population living there ; the places were mostly attacked in order to drive the inhabitants out of the area before the felling work began.

From its original 727,900 square kilometers, the Liberian rainforest has been reduced to just under a tenth of its original size in the past few decades. As a forest ranger, Siakor recognized the immense damage and began to take action against the overexploitation in 2000. He collected data and verifiable evidence of these illegal practices, and on May 6, 2004, the UN - also thanks to his reports - imposed a timber trade embargo on Liberia. Siakor was threatened and he fled the country with his family. After Taylor left the country, the logging concessionaires insisted on their contracts and continued the logging operations. Siakor and other environmental activists informed international environmental protection organizations and founded the Sustainable Development Institute of Liberia as the first environmental protection office in Liberia. Subsequently, parts of the country were designated as nature reserves, and the areas for logging were re-regulated.

For his successful fight to protect Liberia's rainforests, Siakor was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in San Francisco in 2006 .

Web links

• Goldman Prize Org (interview and video)
• Greenpeace Interview (August 2004) with Siakor Part 1 Part 2 (German)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Michelle Nijhuis: Silas Siakor put his life on the line to save Liberia's forests In: Grist Magazine , April 24, 2006. Retrieved January 10, 2011.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Eliza Barclay: Goldman Environmental Prize Winner Silas Kpanan'Ayoung Siakor on Exposing Blood Timber In: Threehugger.com online portal , February 4, 2008. Retrieved January 10, 2011.