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Illegal logging and deforestation are on the rise in Liberia, home to almost half of West Africa\u2019s surviving tropical forests.\u00a0Corruption is rife and cocoa farmers from neighboring Ivory Coast are invading protected forests, while schemes to reward conservation by selling carbon credits from intact forests have repeatedly failed to get off the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But there is new hope. Two-thirds of the country\u2019s forests are owned by rural communities, and a disarmingly simple scheme now being launched by the country\u2019s leading environmentalist will pay those communities up front in cash, if they agree to banish loggers and protect their trees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The novel plan \u201cbreaks a logjam that has prevented conservation and land reform initiatives from taking hold in Liberia for decades,\u201d says David Rothe, a development consultant and former policy advisor to the British government. \u201cIt is the most hopeful plan I have seen,\u201d says Saskia Ozinga of the European forests NGO Fern.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If it works, both long-time observers of tropical-forest policymaking say that it could have important lessons for other countries that are losing their forests. It could even become a model for a new approach to helping protect some of the world\u2019s most critical stores of carbon in tropical forests, which will be the focus of international climate negotiations later this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two decades after a ruinous civil war, Liberia\u2019s forests are in a poor state and its people are among the world\u2019s poorest.<\/p>\n
After being founded as a state for freed American slaves in 1822, Liberia escaped European colonial rule. Today the thinly populated country\u2019s forests are the heart of West Africa\u2019s last remaining biodiversity hotspot \u2014 home to endangered chimpanzees, Diana monkeys, and most of the 2,500 pygmy hippos surviving in the wild.<\/p>\n
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In theory, Liberia could have a thriving bioeconomy based around sustainable harvesting of its forests, ecotourism, and international funding for forest conservation.\u00a0But 20 years after a ruinous civil war, and despite plenty of foreign aid for rebuilding, the country\u2019s forests are today in a poor state, the logging industry is ill-managed and often corrupt, and its people are among the world\u2019s poorest, ranking 177 among 193 countries in the UN Human Development Index.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Liberia\u2019s state institutions, including its Forestry Development Authority (FDA), have a \u201cveneer of good governance that successfully conceals\u2026 widespread corruption,\u201d a\u00a0review conducted for the European Union concluded in 2022.\u00a0 \u201cThe very elements of state capacity that international donors have spent millions on supporting\u2026 are wielded in service of fraudulent ends,\u201d found Gregory Coleman, a former and current inspector general of the Liberia National Police, and Benjamin Spatz, a former special advisor to its government now at the University of Cape Town. The \u201cmanipulation of formal processes,\u201d the review noted, amounted to \u201ceconomic gaslighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
A timber truck in Zorzor, Liberia.\u00a0<\/span> An EU scheme to decriminalize the timber trade by\u00a0using barcodes to track logs from the forests to export markets was extensively subverted under a former managing director of the FDA. Up to 70 percent of the country\u2019s log exports were made \u201coff the books,\u201d according to a\u00a0dossier compiled by the British government.<\/p>\n The gap between theory and practice in the protection of Liberia\u2019s forests has long been huge. Since the end of the civil war in 2003, successive governments have pioneered enshrining in law the traditional rights of rural communities to their forest lands. Some\u00a068 percent of the forests are now under community control.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the system has repeatedly been \u201chijacked by rapacious logging companies,\u201d says David Young, a consultant on forest governance and formerly of the NGO Global Witness. Complicit government officials have repeatedly duped local leaders into signing agreements on behalf of their communities that hand over logging rights to their forests. Most commercial timber production today comes from community forests, but the promised jobs and royalties rarely materialize.\u00a0<\/p>\n A new threat to Liberia\u2019s forests is being posed by poor cocoa farmers from neighboring Ivory Coast, the world\u2019s largest cocoa producer. Media\u00a0reports estimate that as many as 25,000 Ivorian cocoa farmers, many of them expelled from protected forests in their own country, have crossed the 450-mile border between the two countries since 2018, leasing forest land from poor Liberian forest communities. More migrant farmers are reportedly arriving from nearby Burkina Faso.<\/p>\n Conservationists hope paying communities to protect their forests will replace profits from leasing their land for farming.<\/p>\n \u201cThe availability of cheap fertile land in Liberia is a magnet for smallholders throughout West Africa,\u201d a study of the invasions by Initiatives for Community Development and Forest Conservation (IDEF), an Ivorian NGO,\u00a0reported last year. Harvested cocoa beans are sent back across the border to enter global supply chains, including those certified as deforestation-free, IDEF claimed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Liberian government has been slow to counter the threat, fearing antagonizing its own communities in remote border areas. Earlier this year, locals living in an area near the border, where forests are being cleared for cocoa farming,\u00a0kidnapped a wildlife ranger in the Grebo-Krahn National Park, after he allegedly violated a local order prohibiting rangers from forest areas deemed to be under the control of traditional leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n Conservationists hope that paying such communities to protect their forests will give them enough money to replace the profits from leasing their land for cocoa farming. But the stakes are high. The cocoa trade \u201crisks fueling a repeat of the widespread cocoa-driven clearances that have all but wiped out\u201d forest cover in the Ivory Coast, IDEF\u2019s director Bakary Traore told Reuters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Liberia\u2019s forests badly need a politically and economically viable route to survival, conservationists warn. To date the most pursued option has been to capitalize on their accumulation of carbon by selling carbon credits into U.N.-sponsored international trading systems known collectively as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).<\/p>\n Forest near Bopolu, Liberia.<\/span> But carbon markets require extensive monitoring, reporting, and verification to demonstrate long-term carbon gains in forests that can be sold as emissions offsets. The bills for these and other overheads mean that \u201cthere is little money left for the locals,\u201d says Arthur Blundell of Natural Capital Advisors, a North American consultancy service for business, who has advised the U.K. and USAID on Liberia\u2019s timber trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Mexico\u2019s \u2018avocado belt,\u2019 villagers stand up to protect their lands. Read more.<\/p>\n Liberia\u2019s efforts to sell carbon credits have been ambitious, but so far unfulfilled. A British entrepreneur with no history of forest activities in 2010 persuaded government officials to sign up to giving him the rights to sell carbon credits accrued from vast areas of the country\u2019s forests. A later report on the affair commissioned by Liberia\u2019s anti-corruption body concluded that the terms of the deal, which was eventually revoked by the president, could have bankrupted the Liberian government.<\/p>\n Then in 2023, the Liberian government signed a confidential memorandum of understanding with Blue Carbon, a company set up by a\u00a0Dubai sheikh, again ceding exclusive rights to sell carbon credits from more than a tenth of the country\u2019s forests.\u00a0 International donors raised concerns that the proposed deal contravened the country\u2019s constitution and the land rights of forest communities, and the project has so far not gone ahead.<\/p>\n A pilot phase of the Liberian initiative is set to start making payments this month to communities near a national park.<\/p>\n The failure to generate income for forest communities from the conservation of their forests is a tragedy for the country\u2019s rural development, says Silas Siakor, one of the country\u2019s most prominent environmental activists. A winner of the Goldman Prize in 2006 for uncovering how illegal timber trade had funded the country\u2019s civil war, he founded the influential Sustainable Development Institute and now runs another forest-oriented Liberian NGO Integrated Development and Learning (IDL). \u201cWe\u2019ve been readying for REDD for about 20 years, but it has not delivered\u2026\u00a0A different approach is required to unlock the vast economic opportunities [these] forests present.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Siakor\u2019s plan, being piloted this summer, is called Payment for Stewardship.\u00a0It bypasses the need for the complex audit required for carbon trading and instead delivers direct up-front cash payments to communities that agree to protect their forests from farming, forestry, or mining.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n He proposes paying an initial 60 cents per acre per year. That may not sound a lot, but it is competitive with what communities receive for allowing their forest to be logged.\u00a0Typical large commercial contracts currently award\u00a030 cents per acre, he says. The agreements to be signed by communities will also establish community funds that ensure the money is shared within the community, either to individual families or for community services such as schools, clinics, or roads.\u00a0<\/p>\n Silas Siakor.<\/span> \u201cBecause land rights are communal, it is important that the whole community benefits from the payments, not just those directly using the forest,\u201d\u00a0Siakor says. The approach should \u201ctip the financial scales\u201d against extractive economic activity in the forests and toward their protection, he says.<\/p>\n Young, who has advised on the project, says Payment for Stewardship \u201cis conditional on keeping the forest standing, but otherwise there are few strings attached\u2026 It emphasizes strengthening communities to manage their forests and the income they get from doing so. There is no wasting money on carbon accounting or international consultants. And critically it is easy to understand \u2014 by everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n It is also happening now. A pilot phase should begin payments this month, says Siakor.\u00a0 Funded for the first two years with $300,000 from Irish Aid, it covers 28 villages in 125,000 acres of dense high-conservation-value forest in Sinoe County in the southeast of the country, close to the Sapo National Park, home to the world\u2019s largest population of pygmy hippos.\u00a0Another partner is the U.S.-based NGO GiveDirectly, which specializes in facilitating unconditional cash transfers to communities living in extreme poverty.<\/p>\n The project was\u00a0launched earlier this month by Siakor\u2019s IDL and Liberia\u2019s FDA, under its new managing director Rudolph Merab. Merab\u2019s officials are currently finalizing maps of community forests and helping train community forest patrols, says Siakor.\u00a0 \u201cCommunity forests have been the vehicle for some of the most serious forestry scandals,\u201d concedes Rothe. \u201cSo, it has risks, hence the emphasis on strengthening management and accountability at community level.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A proposal by Brazil would establish a fund to protect forests that would include direct payments to communities.<\/p>\n With further international funding in the pipeline, Siakor expects to quadruple the project\u2019s reach to 500,000 acres by 2027 and hopes another 2.5 million acres may become available to communities as existing logging licences in community-owned forests lapse or are canceled. \u201cThere is potential to bring this to scale quickly, if we can secure the finance to get it off the ground,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The innovative approach is being looked at with increasing interest by governments and by private and philanthropic organizations that have become jaded by the\u00a0poor track record of many carbon-offset projects. \u201cNon-market\u201d approaches to protecting forests were formally operationalized last year under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. And a version of paying for forest conservation without detailed carbon accounting forms a central plank of proposals that Brazil hopes will be agreed at the next climate conference in the Amazon city of Bel\u00e9m later this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brazilian President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva wants the international community to create a Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), a permanent $125 billion endowment fund that would pay tropical forest countries $1.60 per acre per year for their protection, with a fifth of the funds potentially allocated to Indigenous people and local communities. \u201cBrazil\u2019s TFFF could be like Payment for Stewardship at a global level,\u201d says Young.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brazil hopes to make the Amazon a model for a green economy. Read more.<\/p>\n Big\u00a0questions remain about the plan, including whether all forests or only dense forests should qualify, what the penalties for continued deforestation might be, how much money will in practice reach forest communities, and whether it could end up criminalizing traditional forest livelihoods. But while the TFFF is embroiled in inter-government negotiations in the coming months, Siakor\u2019s payments should be reaching the bank accounts of Liberian forest communities any day now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Illegal logging and deforestation are on the rise in Liberia, home to almost half of West Africa\u2019s surviving tropical forests.\u00a0Corruption is rife and cocoa farmers from neighboring Ivory Coast are invading protected forests, while schemes to reward conservation by selling carbon credits from intact forests have repeatedly failed to get off the ground.\u00a0 But there<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[998,4948,2230,364,1436,1119],"class_list":{"0":"post-11542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-forests","9":"tag-liberias","10":"tag-paying","11":"tag-people","12":"tag-plan","13":"tag-save"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Tommy Trenchard \/ Alamy\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n John Wessels \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n
\n Courtesy of Silas Siakor<\/span><\/p>\n