Côte d’Ivoire, a nation with exceptional biodiversity, vast mineral deposits, and significant revenue from cocoa and other exports, has put environmental health and sound natural resource governance at the heart of its vision for sustainable development and conflict prevention. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been supporting the Government of Côte d’Ivoire in realizing this vision by conducting independent scientific analyses of the environment in the country based on sampling, remote sensing and institutional evaluation.
In September 2015, UNEP released a Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment of the state of the environment in Côte d’Ivoire. The report covers a range of environmental issues with direct or indirect linkages to the several phases of violent conflict in the country, including the degradation of forests, national parks and the Ébrié lagoon; unplanned urban expansion; industrial and artisanal mining and the risk of oil spills along the Ivorian coastline. The report includes recommendations for practical, institutional and legal responses to the problems identified.
In January 2018, UNEP launched an independent scientific audit of the sites affected by the 2006 dumping of toxic wastes from the Probo Koala ship in and around the city of Abidjan. The objective of the audit, which was requested by the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, was to determine if these sites continued to pose risks to the environment or to public health. The full report of this audit presents the results of the laboratory analysis and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. It also provides a series of targeted recommendations to the Ivorian authorities.
