Silas Kpanan'Ayoung Siakor

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

Life

Born in Liberia in 1970 Silas Siakor since the 1990s, working as a forest supervisor in the tropical rain forest of Liberia. During the Second Liberian Civil War, the foreign currency accounts of the Liberian government of Charles Taylor have been blocked due to international sanctions, Taylor used henceforth illegal commercial transactions (blood diamonds, gold sales ) in order to arrive at foreign exchange. Another source of income was the trade in tropical timber, this Taylor sold concessions to a wood trading company from Malaysia. The so incipient depletion in the tropical rainforest also had consequences for the indigenous people living there, most places were raided to expel the residents before the start of felling in the area.

Of the original 727 900 square kilometers of the Liberian rainforest has been reduced in recent decades to nearly a tenth of its original size. As forest supervisor Siakor recognized the immense damage and began in 2000 to fight against the exploitation. He collected data and verifiable evidence of these illegal practices, was on 6 May 2004 by the UN - a timber trade embargo imposed on Liberia - also thanks to its reports. Siakor was threatened and he fled with his family out of the country. After Taylor had left the country, the timber concessionaires insisted on their contracts and continued the Abholzaktionen. Siakor and other environmental activists informed international environmental organizations, they founded the Sustainable Development Institute of Liberia as the first environmental protection office in Liberia. As a result, parts of the country have been designated as conservation areas, the areas of harvest were nachreglementiert.

For his successful fight to protect the rain forests of Liberia got Siakor 2006 in San Francisco, the Goldman Environmental Prize awarded.