The Scars That Remain: Living with the Environmental Impact of the Sierra Leone Civil War

In the last decade, Sierra Leone has sustained a precarious peace. However, it has been built on shaky foundations, and the population and environment remain scarred from the nation’s Civil War. Until these wounds are healed, communities will continue to suffer from the inequalities, tensions, and damage that remain.

The devastating Civil War in Sierra Leone lasted from 1991-2002. Throughout, the environment and natural resources were deeply tied to the conflict. They were key factors in provoking and fuelling the war and fell victim to its destructiveness.

The Forgotten Factor

In this conflict and many others, the environment played as important a role as religion, politics, or other factors at play in the horrors carried out. However, in the process of peacebuilding, it is rarely examined as closely: Conflicts associated with natural resources are twice as likely to relapse into violence after the first five years of peace, but less than a quarter of peace negotiations address resource or environmental management. (UNEP, 2009)

Landscape of War

The Civil War involved natural resources from the very start. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebel group attempting to overthrow Sierra Leone’s government, seized diamond mines to help fund its activities. More widely, scarcity, tensions over ownership, access to natural resources and unequal distribution of benefits contributed to discontent with the central government and support for the RUF. Environment sparked the match and provided fuel for the flames of conflict.

An Uneasy Peace

If a peace is to last, the fundamental issues which provoked conflict must be addressed alongside processes of demilitarisation and reconciliation. In Sierra Leone, progress has been made: Child soldiers have been rehabilitated, special courts have prosecuted those responsible for atrocities, and the peace and reconciliation commission has led a ‘national project of healing’ by investigating the roots of conflict (Mitton, 2015). However, many environmental issues from the start of the war remain unresolved.

The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Sierra Leone identified rural alienation, opaque governance of natural resources, unfair distribution of their benefits and inefficient and unsustainable practices as conditions which helped trigger the conflict and which persist today. (UNEP, 2017)

Many government-run environmental institutions are failing. There is evidence of corruption, land-grabs, and backroom deals with the extraction sector which do not benefit the people or the environment. Lack of transparency and accountability has led to a mistrust in government, particularly in rural communities, who expected economic growth and political involvement in the post-conflict era. These hopes have been dashed and population growth and climate change threaten to make the situation worse. (UNEP, 2010, 3)

National Fragility

These underlying injustices and grievances continue to bubble under the surface and threaten to boil over into conflict if left unaddressed. Reforms which have been promised are widely seen as insubstantial, and significant change has not been made. Many feel there is no legal or democratic means to air their grievances and have instead turned to violence, such as the 2007 protests in Kono (UNEP, 2010, 3.) Such localised violence can quickly develop into more widespread conflict.

In the words of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Sierra Leone, “The country is fragile.” (Neething, 2007, 89.) It is recovering from the horrors it faced in the late 90s, but the population continues to live with injustice, inefficiency, and insecurity which increase the likelihood of sliding back into conflict. In Sierra Leone, there is still work to be done.

The Silent Casualty

Peacemakers often overlook the fact that the environment itself can be a victim of a war. The landscape in Sierra Leone was damaged directly and indirectly by the war. This has led to the collapse of institutions and caused long-term threats to the health, livelihoods and security of the population.

The war devastated the country’s ecology. Much of this damage has not been addressed and the government remains unable to run basic services, especially in rural areas (UNEP, 2010.) This has been catastrophic for communities who rely on arable farming for their livelihoods.

‘The hills and the valleys re-echo our cry…’

The 2010 Environmental Performance Index placed Sierra Leone at the bottom of its list and highlighted significant regression since the Civil War: the Index gave particularly low scores for ‘environmental health’ and outlined the severe effect of environmental degradation on the personal health of civilians (Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 2010). The 2022 report still sees Sierra Leone placed 140 of 180, and foregrounded the same issues; including disease, access to drinking water and sanitation, and air pollution. (Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 2022.)

This environmental destruction also causes psychological and social harm to people who have farmed this land for generations and have a deep relationship with its ecology and nature. For them, seeing it suffer is unbearable.

Survival tactics

2.6 million people were displaced by the conflict. This contributed to the environmental disaster. (Caldor and Vincent, 2006.) These people had to deploy certain coping strategies that were ‘survival based’ (UNEP, 2010, 8). Due to the extremity of the situation, all that was considered was staying alive.

The result was highly unsustainable forestry, agriculture, and mining practices- also called ‘slash-and-burn techniques’ (UNEP, 2010, 8.) Uncertainty led to rapid and high-impact extraction of natural resources of all types and farmers abandoned traditional livelihoods for short-term measures. Over time, these coping strategies became standard practice- even after the peace process. There has been severe overfishing in rivers and bays, rapid deforestation and unsafe mining practices that are bad for both industry and environment (UNEP, 2010, 45).

Unless rural populations get support to scale down these strategies, scarcity in the water and forest sectors will start to pose a serious problem. If carried out effectively, the nation can not only move away from the dramatically unsustainable war-time survival practices, but also also embrace cleaner environmental strategies that will have long term benefits for both the communities and the climate.

Water

In terms of environmental infrastructure, the lack of water system recovery has been especially harmful to communities. RUF fighters consistently targeted water tanks and wells in their attacks on villages which set back an already imperfect system. UNEP experts now say that water shortages, especially in the dry season, are seriously inhibiting the overall recovery process (UNEP, 2010, 45).

Land

Agricultural systems also took a hit and have not fully recovered. Plantations, plots and livestock were lost as rebel fighters sacked towns and villages. This meant many farmers were displaced and left their land abandoned for years. Although attempts have been made to revitalise the sector, recovery has been slow and foreign investors have swooped in to buy up land (UNEP, 2010, 45). There are concerns that vulnerable rural communities will become poorer and more unstable, which poses the particular risk of young people joining criminal gangs, religious extremists or rebel organisations.

Forests

Military activity directly damaged forests. All sides played a role in this, but the RUF especially seems to have undertaken a programme of crop and vegetation destruction that was ‘seemingly senseless and random in fashion’ (UNEP, 2010, 45). The fighting and looting in these forests had a devastating effect on ecosystems and on those who rely on woodland to sustain their livelihoods. These areas are used by 95% of the population for firewood and construction materials as well as for cash crops like cocoa and coffee. They are also vital symbols of cultural heritage and national identity (UNEP, 2010, 62). Poor forest management, and resulting scarcity, are major risks to the long-term peace of the country.

Blood Diamonds

Diamond mining is one of the most well-known and significant environmental issues in Sierra Leone. It was a cause of the war, and the conflict exacerbated many problems associated with it. According to estimates, more than 50 percent of the diamond mining industry remains unlicensed and illegal smuggling is still rife (Neethling, 2007, 89.)

During the war the RUF hugely increased mining to support their operations as part of the ‘arms for diamonds programme’ (Amnesty, 2000) that saw up to $125 Million leave the country each year during the war (UNEP, 2010, 45). The expanded mining sites have not been rehabilitated, leaving behind dangerous sites and lost farmland. Elders in Sierra Leone have described them as ‘death traps’ where children die every year (UNEP, 2010, 45).

‘Land that we love, our Sierra Leone.’

The UN’s Rio declaration recognised that peace, economic development, and environmental protection are ‘interdependent and indivisible.’ (UNEP, 2009, 4) Yet, in Sierra Leone, the environment remains damaged and communities continue to suffer. These are conditions that increase the likelihood of political discontent and conflict. There has already been violence in recent months in the run up to the General Election, demonstrating that old divisions remain and have been exacerbated by economic troubles and lack of political transparency (Fofana and Macaulay, 2023).

Although the dust has settled and combatants have laid down their arms, Sierra Leone will struggle to move on from its Civil War if these environmental wounds are not healed. There can be no durable peace if the resources that sustain livelihoods and the ecosystems that communities cherish remain damaged and degraded.

Bibliography

Caldor, M. and Vincent, J. (2006), “Evaluation of United Nations Development Programme Assistance to Conflict-Affected Countries: Case Study of Sierra Leone.”

Engwicht, N. and Ankenbrand, C. (2021), “Natural resource sector reform and human security in post-conflict societies: Insights from diamond mining in Sierra Leone”, The Extractive Industries and Society, 8(4).

Neethling, T. (2007), “Pursuing sustainable peace through post-conflict peacebuilding: The case of Sierra Leone.”, African Security Review, 16(3), pp.81–95.

United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (2014). “Feature: Sierra Leone – from ashes of war UN helps plant seeds of peace.” UNIPSIL. Available at: Feature: Sierra Leone – from ashes of war UN helps plant seeds of peace | UNIPSIL (unmissions.org)

Laurence is a member of the War Studies Department at King’s College, London. He wrote this piece as part of his internship with Arts4Refugees. His motivation was to help his peer group understand the unique experiences of post-conflict communities. This article was edited by Cassia Jefferson, a fellow student journalist from Oxford University. Bernadett from Swinburne University interviewed Laurence for the podcast as well. The infographic was generated using Napkin.ai.

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