The indigenous people of Liberia possess an immense knowledge of their environments, based on centuries of living close to nature. They have lived on and from the richness and variety of complex ecosystems, they have an understanding of the properties of plants and animals, the functioning of ecosystems and the techniques for using and managing them that is particular and often detailed. In rural communities, locally occurring species are relied on for many or sometimes all foods, medicines, building materials and other products. Equally, people's knowledge and perceptions of the environment, and their relationships with it, are often important elements of cultural identity. For instance a grandmother would request or encourage her sick grandchild to take a walk along the path for few minutes and get healing from the touch of special trees, leafs or of breeze blowing at a particular point in time. Meanwhile, the experience of colonialism and the fratricidal war in Liberia was the beginning of the decline in the importance of traditional knowledge.

In today's reality, enculturation has penetrated the walls of our unique local value system. The communication of traditional knowledge is being hampered by struggle from Western-derived cultures that captures the imagination of the youthful generation. The young people are overwhelmed by technology that teaches them non-indigenous ways, and limits the capacity of the elders nowadays to pass on traditional knowledge to the youth. More so, as the elders die, the full richness of tradition is diminished without some of it being passed on and so is lost. Liberia is one of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) inarguably characterized by mass poverty, inadequate food security, poor environmental health, intermittent political instability and high level of economic inefficiency. Unfavorable balance of knowledge continues to pose a serious challenge to the agenda for transformation in post-war Liberia. The natural and human resources that are needed to adequately address this problem are yet to be efficiently employed. The impact of the civil war was felt in all spheres of the Liberian society. It resulted in considerable destruction of local knowledge system productive, economic and commercial activities and loss of livelihood for whole communities widespread destruction or decay of public and private properties as well as of physical and social infrastructures.

The nature of local knowledge system in Liberia is such that its unique components are pivotal for sustainable growth. As a nation getting on the trajectory of transformation, it is pertinent to employ a policy that will prohibit actors in government from exploiting nature & biodiversity for their selfish gains and help us as a society to attain the goals that we envision for the next generations. It is predicted that with the estimated 4 Million population and multi-cultural practices in Liberia, indigenous people are faced with the problem of maintaining and managing their knowledge system. The rapid fall in the values of traditional knowledge in Liberia can also be attributed to modern civilization & formal education, religious practices, cultural diversity, etc. The traditional knowledge system of our people has been, for a long time, ignored and maligned by outsiders often perhaps due to the assumption that traditional knowledge and practices have become obsolete when faced with the wide range of scientific knowledge and it fast-paced development. Furthermore, formal education systems have disrupted the practical everyday life aspects of traditional knowledge and ways of learning, replacing them with abstract knowledge and academic ways of learning thereby resulting in the loss of much indigenous and, along with it, valuable knowledge about ways of living sustainably. Most environmental conservation approaches are often formulated in the absence of the cultural factors and inclusion of people's knowledge and expertise on the issue, thereby often resulting in the total rejections of such initiatives by the people. This lack of acceptance of the importance of traditional knowledge, and absence of a sense of participation, responsibilities and ownership among the indigenous communities has also led to the eventual failures of many well-meaning development interventions. During the recovery process in 2003 after the 14 years civil crisis, an international NGO built a hand pump in a local community in Lofa County (northern Liberia) to provide safe drinking water for the community dwellers. The hand pump as good as it was and in the best interest of the community was not used by the community dwellers as the women continue to collect water from the nearby creek. The question was what went wrong? The answer is, local community was never consulted or involved in the planning or implementation process, and as a result, couldn't take ownership.

While economic growth is necessary it does not constitute true and sustainable development. Rather, it has to be linked to a set of well defined socio-cultural objectives that puts culture and people first. Development concerns such as prevention of the degradation of the environment, conservation of scarce natural resources or finding alternatives to them, population control and so forth- have wide ramifications in the domain of culture. Any consideration of the quality of life will be meaningless if it does not take into account deeply held cultural values. The notion of basic needs i.e. nutrition, education, health, employment, and leisure- again is organically linked to culture. In this perspective, development can be meaningful and successful if it is formulated in accordance with the cultural parameters and felt needs of the people using tools like traditional knowledge. However, there is a need for caution. Such development initiatives should neither be imposed from outside nor should it be exteriorly designed. It should be people and culture oriented and this is actually possible only when the cultural values and traditional knowledge of the community are taken into account during the entire process of planning, implementation, and evaluation. Much ecological and resource knowledge is encoded in local language. As such, it follows logically that indigenous communities are perhaps uniquely situated to assist in integrated conservation/management of rare and endangered resources.  It should be obvious, but it is important to note that there are specialists in traditional societies just as there are specialists in technological societies. Indigenous communities have, over time, come up with many resource management practices that build on detailed knowledge of their environment. Social taboos such as specific food taboos, harvesting method taboos, taboos against harvesting in certain seasons or under certain conditions and the like may also have the effect of contributing to resource sustainability, although they may not have specific conservation origins. 

In conclusion, I reaffirm my willingness and unfailing support to encourage and sustain the preservation of local culture in Liberia and call on all ambassadors and young leaders of the world to keep sacred their local cultures, beliefs, and values.