Africa-Press – Liberia. ArcelorMittal Liberia’s Environmental Department, in collaboration with a non-governmental organization, Committee for Peace, and Development Advocacy (COPDA), has embarked on an Agro Reforestation Program in villages or towns around the company’s mining communities.
The project, which is part of ArcelorMittal
Liberia’s Biodiversity Program, is intended to introduce commercial and sustainable farming methods to local farmers through the planting of cash crops as a means of reforestation of the areas under AML mining operations.
Accordingly, the program will help reduce the pressure subsistence farming is mounting on the forest, especially around the mining zone, destroying the vegetation, which of course resulted in climate change.
At the program held recently in Bolo, one of the affected communities, Mark Cope, Yuelliton Direct Shipping Ore (DSO) Manager for AML, said the company is concerned about the environmental impact of mining on the forest and is scaling up action to replant trees impacted by mining operations.
Mr. Cope said AML will work with the people of Bolo Community to ensure that the forest does not vanish but is maintained to host the varieties of animals that use it as their habitat.
Under the Agro Reforestation Project, COPDA with support from AML will open 11.5 hectares of oil palm plantation, 11.5 hectares of Cocoa farm, and 11 hectares of Plantain farm.
“This project will also supply rice milling machines, farming tools, seedlings and signs, and rice threshers to the farmers,” said Ted Brooks, COPDA, Project Manager.
Mr. Brooks disclosed during the launch of the project that they have a nursery of 17,000 seedlings of oil palm, 12,000 seedlings of cocoa, and 17,000 signs of plantain ready to be planted. He extended a word of appreciation to AML for the support, calling it “a dream that will come true.”
He further noted that COPDA has conducted a baseline survey for direction and farmers have been organized for the project.
Bolo is a community situated right under the peak of Yuelliton, where AML’s new mining operation has commenced.
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