Hello, I’m Val Thompson, Publisher of the International Focus Magazine and I’m here today to interview Dr. Emmanuel Urey-Yarkpawolo who is the Director of Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia (EPA) for the Republic of Liberia. How are you today, Sir?

Hi, I’m very good, welcome to the Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia.

I’m happy to be here. The first question I have for you is tell us a little bit about your background, Sir.

My name is Dr. Emmanuel Urey-Yarkpawolo. I serve as Executive Director for the Environmental Protection Agency. My background is environmental science, and I hold a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin Madison Environmental Science Law broadly. I also hold a Masters Degree in the same field.

I was born and grew up in Liberia, actually, I was born in a very rural village and lived there until I started school at the age of 14 and then I moved to Monrovia. I lived in Liberia, went to school in Liberia and then came to the U.S. where I attended school. So, now I’m back in Liberia again. When it comes to the field of environmental science, I have a broader perspective from rural life to city life to a developed country like the United States and now I’m back to help the country.

Very impressive Sir! What is the EPA and how does it engage with the government?

The Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia, or EPA for short, was established by an Act of Legislature in 2002 and published in 2003, but not until after the civil war in 2006 did the EPA start operating. It is an instrument responsible for regulating the environment of Liberia because basically if we talk about investment, we are talking about people, profit and environment. To be able to balance those, we use resources today so that the resources are available for generations to come, there has to be some regulation. The work of the EPA is to enforce that regulation. How we develop as a country, but in a much more sustainable way, that’s the question we address at the EPA.

How the EPA help the citizenry of the nation. How does the agency help?

Well, I will give you an example. If a mining company is going to mine, they go to the Ministry of Lands and Mines and obtain a mining license, but they have to come to the Environmental Protection Agency to issue the environmental permit. The permit has several regulations on how they have to mine in the way that they will not pollute the water resources. They have to mine in the way that they will not degrade the forests. These types of decisions and enforcement regulations help the country in terms of preserving water resources, preserving land resources, saving our forests, and we depend on those things for survival. The work of the EPA is to help regulate those kinds of behaviors.

I understand that the EPA regulations help people from coming to Liberia and destroying the environment to where it is detrimental to the citizenry. This is very good to hear.

We are here to protect the environment and prevent these types of issues from happening.

Please share how the EPA engages with other areas of the government?

We pretty much work across a broad government spectrum. So, the EPA law cuts across all government agencies. For instance, I was just talking about the Ministry of Lands and Mines, but we also work with the Ministry of Agriculture. So, if people are doing agricultural commercial farming, if they use fertilizers or different kinds of chemicals, we want to be sure that the environment is safe for the fish population, for example. We work with the mayor’s resources, the Port Authority, those who are selling petroleum products, and the Minister of Commerce and Industry. So, our work cuts across nearly all government agencies in terms of environmental regulations.