Green Prophets Shouting To Prevent Future Wars; Guiding Inclusive Human Growth
I am not like classical
prophets as found in the Bible. I am an environmental prophet; or a Climate Change prophet – a Green Prophet . At 70 years nine months old today in 2025, for almost all my 47 years post-university life, 17 years of that time as a migrant and Ideas Entrepreneur in Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana; and 30 years here in Sierra Leone, I would risk my life as I hatch and develop ideas daring to travel to different countries with nothing in my hand but a few clothes and books; I would endure deprivations of no income, no reliable place to sleep or food to eat; all the while, I would scream through my published articles, sometimes talk on radio and television, to warn West Africans to take preventative and curative action on environmental degradation; to make appropriate response to the Climate Change War in effective adaptation and mitigation measures – that was how in 1987 in Monrovia, Liberia, my brainchild, the
SAVE* MY FUTURE CONSERVATION SOCIETY ( SAMFU) was registered as a NGO in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Have they been listening to my Jeremiad warnings? And imaginative ideas on solutions? Hardly. Would they listen to the alarms being raised by other Green Prophets, some of which I quote again in this article?
I crave your indulgence to read another one of my provocatively lengthy articles that I have laced with a biographical narrative to gloss my more combative stance today.
At 70 years nine months old today, looking back at my experience in several West African countries and observing the lukewarm and superficial attitude of West Africans to environment and development; West Africans who would blithely ignore the crescendo of warnings of global scientists, I sometimes wonder: Is there something wrong with the African governing class that they vindicate the white supremacists about the subhuman stage of evolution of the average African? I still have hope in the African.
Ignoring or belying Climate Change could lead to collapse of civilization. Choas!! Wars!! Not wars all over the world at the same time. But, in bits; within countries; in regions.
I hope my article will induce public sector and private sector financiers to finance my ideas being made into video documentaries and posted on all social media platforms, and to be used in face-to-face educational engagements of especially children and youth. To inspire them to catalyse the necessary radical and urgent changes on Climate Change variables within African countries, and, globally – or, they would capitulate to mass murder; acquiesce to mass suicide.
Climate change is also a threat multiplier; conflicts loom
“Climate change’s profound reshaping of conflict dynamics is already underway. The question facing humanity now is not whether we will confront these pressures, but how we will choose to do so
“Climate change is increasingly recognised not merely as an environmental crisis but as a threat multiplier, worsening political and economic tensions worldwide.
“Two factors – water scarcity and mass migration – are poised to completely reshape global conflict dynamics. Without coordinated global action , these pressures may induce a vicious circle of interlocking issues: destabilization of livelihoods, unprecedented waves of civil unrest and political violence , mass migration and surging border conflicts…
” The world is interconnected. A shift in one location will impact another. Fresh water is a resource we all need to survive, and as it dwindles, conflicts can flare . At the same time, rising sea levels and soaring temperatures will make cities and huge swathes of land uninhabitable.
“Put together, these human-induced changes will lead to the widespread movement of people into countries that are hell-bent on protecting their resources.
“In response, governments will likely deploy ever-more sophisticated military technology to protect their own citizens, becoming more insular in the process.
“Once capitalism is at the risk of crumbling, social divides increase, and nations, corporations, and even ultra-wealthy individuals may begin to take matters into their own hands – addressing climate change in a way that benefits them, potentially at the expense of others….” (SOURCE: Climate wars are approaching – and they will redefine global conflict; https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/the-coming-climate-wars-how-water-scarcity-and-mass-migration-will-redefine-global-conflict-opinion; by Topher McDougal [McDougal is Professor of Economics & Peacebuilding at the University of San Diego’s Kroc School of Peace Studies)
Are the governing elites in Sierra Leone, in Africa, reading such warnings, and preparing African countries to address them? I doubt it. All the relevant scientific institutions have been stating for about thirty years now that Africa is the most vulnerable to the caprices of man-made Climate Change; Africa has the least financial, technological, and human resources to cope with the ravages of Climate Change. There is also the political fragility of most African countries where politics is a Zero Sum game to capture a presidency, and empower a narrow regional or tribal elite. The governing elites in nearly all African countries are fixated only in using politics to enrich themselves and a few relatives and cronies. They care very little what calamities befall the majority of people they lead. They can hardly make sense of issues beyond their village or region of about a hundred miles in diameter. Water and migration are variables that the quote warns there could lead to conflicts. What does it mean for us in Sierra Leone?
Water…water….water everywhere and water nowhere
A Sierra Leonean journalist. Ragan M. Conteh. writes in a local newspaper on the environmental degradation leading to a water crisis in Freetown: “As MPs frown at encroachers… Guma Impressed Parliamentary Committee on Water Resources…
“In its continued effort to strengthen accountability and protect the country’s most vital natural resources, the Parliamentary Committee on Water Resources and Sanitation , chaired by the Opposition Chief Whip, Hon. Abdul Karim Kamara (AKK), has conducted an oversight visit to several Guma Valley Water Company facilities across Freetown and Waterloo.
“The committee (of Parliament) toured major Guma installations, including the Mile 13 and Regent Dams, as well as the Angola Town Treatment Center and Allen Town facilities.
“At the Mile 13 Dam, MPs expressed grave concern over indiscriminate land grabbing and encroachment on protected forest areas.
“They noted that individuals are cutting deep into the green belt, undermining the ecological balance that safeguards Freetown’s water supply.
“Deputy Managing Director of Guma Valley, Engineer Prince Moore-Sourie, warned that unchecked encroachment could compromise the dam’s future. ‘If this threat is not addressed, we risk losing the dam,’ he cautioned, stressing the dangers both to the water system and to settlers themselves.
“While commending Guma Valley for its ongoing work in difficult conditions, MPs strongly condemned the actions of encroachers destroying forest cover and threatening water facilities. They called it reckless and dangerous, not only to the dam, but also to the very lives of those who chose to settle unlawfully around it.
“…”The Guma dams are not just reservoirs – they are lifelines for the people of Freetown ,’ Hon. Kamara stressed. ‘To jeopardize them is to jeopardize the health, safety, and future of our nation’…”
Alarming words by our MPs. The Guma Valley Water Company has been issuing similar warnings in prose messages, and video documentaries, for the past ten years now. During a Townhall Meeting organised at the Bintumani International Conference Center in Freetown by the information ministry in June 23, 2024, the President, Retired Brigadier Maada Bio, spat fire on those elites building over the Green Belt on the Freetown Peninsular. He didn’t match his tough words with tough action. About a month ago, a visibly enraged President said he would take punitive action against land encroachers on the mountains of the Freetown Peninsular. He hasn’t!
Whilst Africans are toying with environmental degradation in their countries there are issues of global warming far beyond their immediate control which would worsen local scenarios.
Should Africans be worried about this worrisome Climate Change news of ice sheet in Antarctica collapsing?
“West Antarctic Ice Sheet is on the verge of a ‘catastrophic’ COLLAPSE – sparking 9.8 feet of irreversible global sea level rise, scientists warn
“As global carbon dioxide (CO2) levels continue to rise, researchers from the Australian National University say that the ice sheet is weakening, and is at increasing risk of collapsing altogether…
“…This would plunge entire coastal cities and communities around the world underwater.
“…Here in the UK, towns and cities including Hull, Skegness, Middlesbrough, and Newport would be covered in water.
“…In Europe, much of the Netherlands, as well as Venice, Montpellier, and Gdansk, would be submerged…
Elsewhere in Europe, Climate Central predicts that the entire coast stretching from Calais to south Denmark would be underwater, along with Venice….
“…The researchers hope the findings will emphasise the urgent need to limit CO2 emissions and curb global warming.
‘The only way to avoid further abrupt changes and their far–reaching impacts is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to limit global warming to as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible,’ Dr Abram said….
“Antarctica’s ice sheets contain 70% of world’s fresh water – and sea levels would rise by 180ft if it melts…
“In addition to rising sea levels, meltwater would slow down the world’s ocean circulation, while changing wind belts may affect the climate in the southern hemisphere…”
(SOURCE: Shivali Best, Science & Technology Editor, 20th August, 2025, livescience.com)
To much of the educated elites, and especially governing elites, such news on ice sheets on Antarctica collapsing could sound like news on a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away. What does this news mean for Sierra Leoneans and other West Africans.
It means nearly all the expensive beachfront properties in Freetown – at Goderich, Lakka, Adonkia, Baw-Baw, No 2 River, Hamilton, York, Tokeh – will go under water; be submerged. All the slums in Freetown like Kroobay will drown with just a few inches of sea level rise locally. The billions of dollars private property constructed on Lagos Island, Lekki, Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Eko Atlantic City. ..will be submerged, unlikeable. Same to cities like Accra, Monrovia, Banjul, Dakar.
Global warming has been (is being) caused by the industrialization of people in the richest nations of the world, mainly in the Northern Hemisphere, and their affluent lifestyles; their gluttony; their insatiable craving for more and more and newer things. Africa is going to pay the most for what has enriched stupendously the peoples of Europe and America. For 29 Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Africa’s presidents and cabinet ministers and elites would sit down in conference halls to talk..talk..talk..as the West, joined by China and India promise to curb the use of fossil fuels, and reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere. There have been more carbon emissions into the atmosphere since the start of COP-1 in 1994.
I am not being hyperbolic: The West and India and China are murdering our children and youth whilst Africa’s leaders sit with mass murderers in conference rooms, and would return home to their home countries not speaking the truth to their peoples
*IPCC 2022
“Deadly with extreme weather, climate change is about to get so much worse. It is likely to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer , gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an ‘unavoidable’ increase in risks , a new United Nations science report says…
“The United Nations Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report said. .if human-caused global warming isn’t limited to just another couple of tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways, with some being ‘irreversible’… The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health…
” Today’s children who may still be alive in the year 2100 are going to experience four times more climate extremes than they do now…. But, if temperatures increase nearly 2 more degrees from now…they will feel five times the floods, storms, drought and heatwaves, according to the collection of scientists at the IPCC.
“Already, at least 3.3 billion people’s daily lives ‘ are highly vulnerable to climate change’, and 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather…
“…The report lists mounting dangers to people, plants, animals, ecosystems and economies, with people at risk in the millions and billions, and potential damage in the trillions of dollars. The report highlights people being displaced from homes, places becoming uninhabitable, the number of species dwindling, coral disappearing, ice shrinking….
“…’Today’s IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership’, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a statement…” (SOURCE: UN IPCC report: ‘Parts of the planet will become uninhabitable’. [whyy.org]; Associated Press; Seth Borenstein; February 28, 2022)
Let’s put the warning in the context of Africa and Sierra Leone. There is ferociously competitive among political parties. Politicians claim to make the lives of their people better. Yet, in nearly all African countries – certainly in Sierra Leone – people have been getting poorer and poorer over the past fifty years. They eat less food. They eat much less nutritious foods. They destroy their invaluable tropical rainforests to grow food and cash crops, but get less for their labors. Millions of their youth flee the rural areas to cities. In cities, hardly any jobs are being created to meet the growing demand of about 70% of youth of employable age. Slums and hopelessness are accelerating. What the IPCC report says there is things will get much worse – especially for countries like Sierra Leone close to the equator, as a warmer world would mean more insect-bourne diseases. And the elites know this. They are siphoning monies overseas to run away to Europe and America.
Would Clifford Flemister’s spirit be watching Africans today with utter disgust?
Excuse me as I veer into my biographical narrative.
What has been my experience in interacting with Africans and Europeans and Americans on environmental issues over the past almost 50 years?
A couple of week ago, as Sierra Leonean based in Lagos, Nigeria, Gassimu Binas Mbaimba, wrote an Open Letter to Sierra Leone’s President Maada Bio and Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu to support my idea of a slave ship to travel to Brazi lfor COP-30, I appealed to Lagos-based publisher/editor of CITY NEWS, Kayode Ogunbummi, to give him support.
Kayode Ogunbummi wrote back saying that generally Nigerians are not keen on issies on Climate Change. I responded: “I know! I know!! I started my environmentalism in Liberia in the 1980s🇱🇷 and moved into Nigeria in the 1990s 🇳🇬.
That dialogue with Kayode Ogunbummi triggered deep thoughts in me on the attitude of West Africans to environmentalism, as I hav experienced it.
Twice-chancellor of two universities in Sierra Leone, Prof. Osman O. Sankoh (aka Mallam O), has been urging me to write my memoirs. I have been reined back by this thought: would readers who gripe over my 1,500-word articles read a biography of 100,000 words?
In 1989 when the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-International and German Forestry Mission to Liberia financed my brainchild, the SAVE MY FUTURE CONSERVATION SOCIETY (SAMFU), to produce and publish GREENLOVE magazine, it was not just that my partner, Ronnie Siakor, an indigenous Liberian, was a genius in cartooning (Ronnie was also a student I taught in the 10th Grade at the Catholic-controlled St Martin’s High School in Gbarnga, Bong County, in central Liberia, in 1981/1982), it was more so that we were both fervent believers in our green cause.
There was a keen contest between SAMFU and the Society for the Conservation of Nature in Liberia (SCNL) and SAMFU by 1988.
SCNL had been established some nine years before SAMFU – SCNL had as its members most Liberians, and all Americans and Europeans having anything to do with forestry and the environment. The Vice President of SCNL was H.E. Mike Gore, the British Ambassador to Liberia, an avid bird watcher who had become an expert on birds migrating from Europe during their Winter months and returning during to Europe their Spring season. Apparently, the Liberians in the SCNL were all not serious about environmentalism, and they were in it only for their upward mobility. The SCNL struggled to have a quorum in their quarterly meetings – as they were all professionals in their regular jobs. Then, in 1987, SAMFU burst on the scene.
I was 33 years old in 1987, but I was slim, flat stomach, no line on my face, Hatha Yoga-athletic, and could easily pass for the same age as Ronnie Siakor who was 23 years of age.
Ronnie Siakor was a layout editor in the No 1 newspaper in Liberia, The Daily Observer, and had done a year at the University of Liberia before dropping out.
By 1989, I had experience largely in teaching in secondary schools in Liberia; a brief experience in the newspaper world as reporter and cartoonist; and experience in trying to build a regional marketing research and marketing company. I was a Sierra Leonean in xenophobic Liberia! But….
I had put by 1987 three years of my full-time to build up SAMFU, with absolutely no income; no contract from anywhere. When I met Clifford Flemister in 1987, he found my absolute dedication incredible and exciting, especially as I showed research I had done, and guided others to do
SAMFU energised the green space, and there was the indigenous Liberian Chairman of the SCNL, one Sambullah, who used the fanaticism of SAMFU, and the admiration of the white expatriates for SAMFU, to galvanise the layback SCNL members; warning them that the money that was poised for environmentalism would go to SAMFU. It apparently worked.
Sambullah finally arranged for a meeting between SCNL and SAMFU. It was at the newly-built four storey Forestry Development Authority (FDA) office at the outskirts of Monrovia, the Liberian capital city. Every corner of the white three-storey building was heavily air-conditioned, and inside was like Europe – where nearly all the expatriates involved with environmentalism had their offices.
On the day of the meeting, we waited in the hallway of a conference room where the SCNL were. Then, we were ushered in.
We both look almost like teenagers, casually dressed; looking hungry.
The SCNL members looked affluent, cultured, and oozed that Americo-Liberian arrogance. Palpably, their faces showed contempt when they saw me and Ronnie Siakor entering the conference room where they sat around a polished table. We were offered seats around the conference table.
I told Ronnie Siakor to speak first because of his Liberian English accent, knowing my Sierra Leonean accent would have put their xenophobic armour up. Ronnie Siakor struggled to explain the mission of SAMFU. A few minutes after he had started, the SCNL deputy chairman, a university lecturer called Appleton, rudely cut off Ronnie Siakor, saying: “Environmental issue is a serious matter, and not for small boys”.
I was pricked by his condescending words, and jumped in robustly. Hearing my articulation and erudition, he raised his head up sharply and scrutinised my face, likely realising that I was a seasoned intellectual, not a college undergraduate.
SAMFU got the contract from the WWF-International in April, 1989. As we were working on the first edition of GREENLOVE magazine, word got out by June, 1989 that the WWF Representative in Liberia, 25 years old Oxford University-educated white English man, James Mayers (who had given SAMFU the contract to produce GREENLOVE magazine), had got his project for tropical rainforest conservation and preservation in Liberia approved by USAID, and $2.5 million would be released. Liberia was recognised globally then as one of the Top 10 biological hotspots of the world because of the plentiness of its species, its diversity and endemism.
After the buzz on the $2.5 million, I met James Mayers several times in his single room apartment in a compound designed for expatriates, off 14th Street in the affluent Sinkor suburb of Monrovia. He told me about the USAID money, and the thinking of the expatriates.
The SCNL was like a club, with no executive, and no office – unlike the full time devotion SAMFU; and an office space. So, the USAID money would be used to give the SCNL administrative structure, especially hiring quality executive staff. The SCNL subsequently published an advertisement for an executive secretary. James Mayers urged me to apply, assuring me there would be no contest in me getting the appointment. But, SAMFU would have to be phased out. I turned down his offer, telling him that I would not betray the trust of the SAMFU Board of Directors.
The SAMFU Board had been pooled by the American-born Liberian, Clifford Flemister. The Norway-educated Flemister was in the late 1970s the Director-General of the General Services Agency (GSA). The GSA was the powerful procurement and management agency for all property of the government of Liberia – an office whose holders would become millionaires overnight through corrupt means. In the late 1970s, the last Americo-Liberian President, Rev William R. Tolbert (who was also President of the World Union of Baptists; and, was a weekly pastor of the First Baptist Church on Ashmun Street in Monrovia) was determined to stamp out corruption in Liberia. He needed someone famous for saint-like honesty to head the GSA. Flemister was then appointed. Flemister served with unimpeachable honesty, and even resisted a family of the President taking mere air-conditioners from the GSA compound, resigning his coveted position. Flemister was revered in Liberia by the time he helped to institutionalise SAMFU, one of the handful of Americo-Liberian elites who dared stayed in Liberia after the 1980 bloody coup that ended 130 years of Americo-Liberian rule of Liberia, and the execution by firing squad of 14 of the Americo-Liberian elite on a beach at Monrovia; and Flemister dared to be publishing criticisms of the military government of Samuel Doe. Flemister got into SAMFU’s Board, Rev. Father Dr. Robert Gbataie Tikpor.
“Father Tikpor” was 63 when he became Chairman of the Board of SAMFU in 1988. He was fearfully fearless: Dean of the main Catholic cathedral on Broad Street in Monrovia, Father Tikpor was once Principal of the St. Paul’s Catholic Seminary in Gbarnga, Bong County, in central Liberia. Father Tikpor would criticize three successive presidents in Liberia – W.V. S Tubman, W.R. Tolbert, and the murderous Samuel Doe – in his writings; and on the Catholic radio. In xenophobic Liberia, a foreigner like me heading his own idea had a Board that was a deterrent to the devilish. It was reprehensible for me to abandon SAMFU after those noble men had stuck out their necks for my cause. The white people did not stop trying to break my resolve.
Molly Docherty’s cy of “you are breaking me in two”!
Molly Docherty was a 22 years old white United States Peace Corps working on her Master’s degree studying the Sapo National Park in Central Liberia; one of the fervent environmentalists who were part of the SCNL. I interacted with her regularly. I vividly remember that night at about 8p.m. when she came to persuade me to drop SAMFU, and join the SCNL to take advantage of the USAID money.
She met me inside a small office in the newly-built house at the Paynesville suburb of Monrovia owned by a Ghanaian, Rev Martin Baah, Managing Director of the German-financed Liberia Credit Union National Association (LCUNA). Rev Martin Baah had offered me the office for use as Director for Scientology office in Liberia, largely because the Scientology office at the YMCA building on Broad Street in downtown Monrovia was not safe enough for the expensive books the Nigerian Africa Scientology Director, Rockson Enyem, had entrusted me to sell. Molly Docherty entered with faded blue jeans and loose cotton blouse, her long flowing brown hair tied in a bun at her back. She made the same pitch to me as had James Mayers.
My response to her was the same as to James Mayers; and she burst out saying: “I am being torn apart”. She was a member of the SCNL, but, she saw the dedication of me and Ronnie Siakor in SAMFU, and her ethics made her to realise that we demanded support. There was another meeting after that which I would save for my biography.
GREENLOVE magazine debut on December 24, 1989 on Liberian television, ELCSL, at about 9p.m. – that same day, on the BBC’s 5:05 p.m. Focus on Africa programme, Charles Taylor announced that his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) had invaded Liberia from Nimba County in the north, and the government of President Samuel Doe should resign. Many in Monrovia silently hailed Charles Taylor. Few Liberians ever imagined that was the start of one of the nastiest and most brutal civil wars in modern history lasting 16 years.
GREENLOVE magazine was well received in Liberia. We circulated GREENLOVE magazine internationally.
Pope John Paul II in a letter to Father Tikpor sent his blessings for GREENLOVE magazine.
His Royal Highness Prince Philip (an avid environmentalist, was also President of World Wide Fund for Nature-International based in Switzerland), spouse of the Queen of the UK, Elizabeth II, sent congratulations to GREENLOVE magazine through James Mayers, the WWF-International Representative in Liberia.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) praised GREENLOVE magazine.
UNICEF’s office in Liberia sent a letter to GREENLOVE magazine indicating its intent to collaborate with GREENLOVE magazine in production of future issues.
The Carter Foundation agreed to let former US President Jimmy Carter be featured as lead story in the second edition of GREENLOVE magazine.
In March, 1990, the United States Educational and Cultural Foundation in Liberia (USECF/L) gave SAMFU a contract to study the relationship between traditional medicinal practice and rapid deforestation in Liberia. The NPFL rebels of Charles Taylor were already half way inside the country heading for the Monrovia capital city by then.
On May 21, soldiers believed to be loyal to President Samuel Doe entered the offices of United Nations at Kongo Town in Monrovia and butchered to death men, women, children, babies of the Gio/Mano tribe believed to be enemies of Doe’s Krahn tribe who had gone to take refuge there. The next day, Ronnie Siakor and I joined those were fleeing Liberia.. What has happened to the tropical rainforests of Liberia we were so passionate about? How many of those environmentalists passionate about the tropical rainforests of Liberia in the 1980s who are even still alive today?
Clifford Flemister I learned died during the heat of the war in Liberia in the 1990s. Rev. Father Dr Robert Tikpor died in 2023, at about age 95. Ronnie Siakor and I revived GREENLOVE in Nigeria in the early 1990s, and Ronnie Siakor migrated to the United States. It will be of enormous interest to meet with others of about 35 years ago.
The civil war in Liberia filtered into Sierra Leone in 1991. It was equally nauseously brutish.
For Sierra Leone and Liberia a term like “the collapse of civilization” is not hypothetical; it’s historical. It’s a reality scared deep in the collective subconscious of peoples in both countries.
My hope; my vision…is to go on preventative mode preempting worse case scenarios. I now publicly echo the recent letter of Gassimu Binas Mbaimba appealing to presidents Bola Tinubu and Maada Bio for help to take COP out of conference halls, energising children and youth. My appeal is also to all leaders in all spheres. In all countries. There is no neutrality.
As the clock ticks for COP-30 in Brazil, this November, 2025, there is still time to give physical form to my idea of a slave ship to travel to Brazil for COP-30.
By Oswald Hanciles
