By Varney Kamara
More than 600 homes in the Commonwealth District, Grand Cape Mount County are directly exposed to severe coastal flooding due to rising sea levels that have destroyed private and public properties, new research has found.
According to the study, the climate change-induced disaster has largely flattened homes and business centers across communities, threatening a significant biodiversity hotspot.
Applying open and participatory mapping technologies, researchers collected data on buildings, water points, school and health facilities, commercial buildings, toilets, drainages, culverts, cemeteries, water points, waterways, and roads that have been heavily impacted by flooding across a community where flooding has put approximately 30,000 inhabitants of Talla, Lower Tombey, Robertsport, and Upper Tombey clans on constant nervous heels.
Using accurate data and mapping illustrations, the Tracking Flooding in Rural Liberia project bridged gaps in current datasets, resulting in a valuable tool for government officials, the local community, and humanitarian workers to make informed decisions.
Data collected by researchers showed that 604 buildings now face a direct threat from flood disasters in affected areas. Closed drainages and blocked waterways have worsened flooding of individual homes, business centers, schools, health facilities, and road networks. This data revealed the findings of the survey, the first real-time flooding data in Liberia, conducted between December 2022 and June 2023. Over 18,000 buildings, 46 educational structures, six health facilities, four markets, 164 water points, 70 public toilets, and 59 waste disposals, among others, were mapped during remote mapping and ground trothing exercises.
This means that most of the homes that have been battered by flooding in this area now face structural damage and the risk of collapsing in the future, including contamination of the environment that could trigger significant disease outbreaks, according to environmental experts. The study showed that most villagers had been made vulnerable to the effects of flooding on their communities, suggesting they must make immediate, medium, and long-term disaster response plans to save their lives, environment, and properties.
“I can be too scared when the water enters our houses and market area. When it is heavy, you can see it pumping from underneath the ground,” said Safuah Kromah, an elderly woman residing in the Londija community of Robersport City.
“I always have a feeling that it (flood) will one day come and swallow us if nothing is done about it. I lost up to USD 25 or LD 4,500 when the water came and cleared my entire market table,” Kromah lamented.
Before the study, an initial engagement between local, national, and international actors showed Liberia has no data for track flooding, except for a small amount of online information.
The Tracking Flooding in Rural Liberia project is funded by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and managed through its regional hub for West and North Africa. Local implementation include iLab Liberia and OSM Liberia. The project team established that critical stakeholders involved in climate change (flooding and sea erosions) initiatives are rarely visible in the project area, thereby posing coordination difficulties to the project.
The study also found that villagers are more knowledgeable about the causes of flooding and are willing to work with partners in responding to its impact. Still, there needs to be more effort from the national government and development actors to prepare to mitigate the impact of flooding and sea erosion despite communities longing for humanitarian and medical support.
“Flooding and sea-level rise are ingesting large rural settlements, but due to a lack of adequate and reliable data, there hasn’t been an awareness drawn to the vulnerability, hazard, exposure, and risk facing the people of Grand Cape Mount County, which by extension is true for the rest of Liberia. This project intends to address this information gap and to support informed decision-making by providing in-depth datasets and map visualizations depicting the situations to catalyze interventions,” Carter Draper, HOT’s Regional Project Manager for the West and Northern African region, told the Liberian Network in a separate interview after the project’s closeout event in Monrovia.
“Therefore, we are calling for an anticipatory action involving all critical stakeholders working at the intersection of Disaster and Climate Resilience to scale up initiatives in designing more sustainable community resilience programs to mitigate the impact of flooding and sea-level rise across Liberia,” he added.
Flooding in Liberia
Liberia’s coastal settlements stretch over 565 kilometers and consist of flat lowlands covered in mangroves and swamps. These areas are prone to climate-related problems like flooding, coastal erosion, and rising sea levels, among other vulnerabilities.
The country boasts nine significant rivers that flow into the Atlantic Ocean through extensive estuaries. The eight coastal cities of Liberia, including Monrovia, receive high rainfall of over 500mm annually, making it one of the wettest capitols globally. Excess rain often causes floods and erosion, damaging property and infrastructure and disrupting people’s lives. The affected communities face persistent challenges in managing these climate change-related risks.
Since 1984, the Commonwealth District, including Robertsport City, which separates Lake Piso from the Atlantic Ocean, has been dealing with flood problems. The area covers 391.377 km2 and comprises Lake Piso, a vital biodiversity hub, and several rivers and streams leading to the Atlantic Ocean.
Lake Piso, known as Lake Pisu or Fisherman’s Lake, is an oblong tidal lagoon in Grand Cape Mount County in western Liberia, near Robertsport. The lake is an important biodiversity hotspot. The largest lake in Liberia, covering 103 km2, Lake Piso is home to over 50 fish species, including tilapia, catfish, and mud skippers. It is also a critical bird habitat with over 200 species, including Pelican birds, mammals, monkeys, reptiles, crocodiles, Invertebrates, crabs, and etcetera.
The lake also serves as a natural barrier between the ocean and the surrounding low-lying communities, connecting the Talla, Lower Tombey, Upper Tombey, and Robertsport clans in this rural part of Liberia.
The lake and rivers frequently flood because of rainfall and high levels of saltwater from the ocean, causing towns and villages along their banks to overflow. Over the past few years, these floods have caused significant harm to homes resulting in deaths, farmland, infrastructure, and businesses in the district.
Frequent flooding of the lake leaves it vulnerable to habitat destruction (washing away vegetation, changing the course of rivers leading to the death of native species). It can also lead to species displacement (can increase the risk of predation), the introduction of invasive species (these foreign species can lead to extinction), disruption of the food chain (by destroying habitats and killing prey species), cause disease transmission (flooding can provide a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other vectors), and can also result to water quality degradation.
Working in collaboration with Liberia’s National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Liberia National Red Cross (LNRC), and other relevant agencies, the Tracking Flooding in Rural Liberia project provides critical stakeholders with much-needed datasets to address or mitigate these existing challenges faced by settlers of the four clans in the Commonwealth District of Grand Cape Mount County.
Organizers of the project anticipate its outcome and encourage investors and development partners to plan and design development initiatives that will improve the living condition of thousands of rural dwellers whose development needs have been neglected for decades.
“We have provided the raw data from scratch. Now, the next move is to ensure that government and development actors step in and begin to actualize the information provided so that we can prevent any potential disaster in the affected areas,” said Albert G. Luogon, Country Director of iLab Liberia.
As a sustainable approach, local youth and critical stakeholders’ capacities were built using open and participatory mapping methodology and open-source tools for map making and data collection. Through Focus Group Discussions and Climate resilience awareness, the communities benefited from understanding how to carry out community-driven activities to better live in harmony with their environment. This is a first step in mitigating hazards and exposure posed by flooding and sea-level rise.
“We were taught how to maintain and clean drainages so the waterways cannot be blocked. This is something I find to be very useful to my community, and I am grateful to HOT- WNA Hub iLab, OSM Liberia and other partners for this project,” said Musa Farmah, Secretary General of Robertsport’s Youths.
