War, Peace, and Climate: How Carbon Trading Can Help Avert Resource Wars

Jul 8, 2016 | Steve Zwick
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Liberian environmentalist Silas Siakor knows all too well what can happen to a fragile nation when a dictator hijacks its commodity sector, as warlord Charles Taylor did in the 1990s - first by using slave labor and “blood diamonds” to finance a devastating civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, and then by spreading that war to Guinea and commandeering the presidency of Liberia itself.

Siakor helped expose Taylor’s use of “conflict timber” to finance those bloody wars, and he helped make sure farmers, conservationists, and commercial enterprises all had a role in restructuring the forest sector once the sanctions were removed - a process that Art Blundell, who chaired the UN Panel of Experts on Liberia, credits with keeping the country’s current peace alive.