location: Liberia

location: Liberia

Social media activity version | Lean version

Plan for close season rings alarm bells for Liberia’s artisanal fishers
- Liberia revealed plans in May for a close season for fishing, but still hasn’t given any details of what it covers, whom it will apply to, or even when it will come into force.
- Policymakers say a pause in fishing activity is necessary to allow stocks to replenish, and is also an obligation for Liberia under a regional fisheries bloc whose other members have also planned or even implemented close seasons.
- Liberia’s small-scale fishers say the plan could be a solution to dwindling catches, but say there must be some form of livelihood support for them during the period when they can’t fish.
- They also say a close season must apply first and foremost to the industrial vessels that harvest a large amount of the country’s fish, including from nearshore waters that are supposed to be the exclusive domain of small-scale fishers.

Troubled rubber plantation in Liberia shuts down after labor unrest
- On June 27, aggrieved workers at the Belgian-French firm Socfin’s rubber plantation in Liberia burned the company’s headquarters and its manager’s private residence.
- The unrest followed a five-day strike over working conditions, housing, medical care and other complaints.
- Despite not being present during the incident, two prominent union leaders have been imprisoned without bail for more than three weeks.
- In the wake of the incident, Socfin has decided to shutter its operations in Liberia indefinitely.

Setback for Guinea mine that threatens World Heritage chimp reserve
- Liberian President Joseph Boakai is backing U.K.-Indian firm ArcelorMittal over access to a key railway in northern Liberia.
- U.S. firm HPX wants to use the rail line to ship ore from its own project in neighboring Guinea to the Liberian port at Buchanan.
- HPX’s plan to mine ore from Guinea’s Nimba Mountains has encountered fierce opposition from some environmentalists, who say it would imperil the area’s tool-using chimpanzees.
- HPX has said it will partner with South Africa’s Guma Group to build a new railway in Liberia that runs parallel to the existing one, but the plans are reportedly in jeopardy over financing.

New illegal logging threatens Liberia’s forests amid vague ban
- Large-scale commercial operators are evading Liberian forestry regulations by illegally processing wood destined for export on-site in forests.
- Timber milled in forests with chainsaws is legally restricted to the production of boards by artisanal loggers for sale on the domestic market, but reporting by Liberian newspaper The Daylight and research by U.S.-based NGO Forest Trends has found large-scale operators producing thicker blocks of high-value wood for export.
- Chainsaw-milled timber isn’t entered into the country’s timber-tracking system, meaning producers can evade sustainable forestry regulations as well as taxes and benefits due to local communities.
- The country’s Forestry Development Authority says it has banned production of this type of timber, but campaigners say it has done little to publicize the ban or prevent traffickers from exploiting this loophole.

Liberia puts a wartime logger in charge of its forests
- In February, Liberia’s newly inaugurated president, Joseph Boakai, appointed timber lobbyist Rudolph Merab to head the country’s Forestry Development Authority.
- Merab has been a fixture in Liberia’s logging industry for decades, and was the co-owner of a company that operated on the Sierra Leonean border during the region’s civil wars.
- Environmental advocates describe Merab as an opponent of community forestry and donor-driven conservation projects.
- Merab’s predecessor as head of the Forestry Development Authority, Mike Doryen, was controversial, with the FDA marred by allegations of corruption and mismanagement under his watch.

World Bank’s IFC under fire over alleged abuses at Liberian plantation it funded
- An investigation into the International Finance Corporation’s handling of human rights abuses at a project it financed in Liberia, the Salala Rubber Corporation, is expected to severely incriminate the World Bank’s private lending arm.
- The World Bank’s Compliance Advisory Ombudsman investigated whether the IFC did enough to address allegations of gender-based violence, land grabbing and unfair compensation by its client, Socfin, between 2008 and 2020.
- It’s anticipated that the report will find the finance institution didn’t act to prevent Socfin from violating its legal obligations to local communities and protect the environment; this finding would follow closely on a damning report into similar failures to hold another IFC client, Bridge International Schools in Kenya, to account
- The IFC missed a February deadline to respond to the CAO report and submit an action plan; the delay comes as a new remedial action framework for the IFC is due to be finalized and released

In Liberia, a former mining activist gets the bully pulpit
- In 2013, Foday Fahnbulleh led a group of student activists who were arrested for protesting the operations of a Chinese mining firm in Liberia.
- The activists accused China Union, which holds a 25-year concession agreement to mine iron ore in Bong County, of neglecting the social development terms of its contract.
- Elected to represent Bong County’s District #7 in October 2023, Fahnbulleh has already forced China Union to testify about what it admitted were “lapses” to its contract responsibilities.
- After one of its managers was held in contempt and detained, the company has asked for a joint working group to address its strained relationship with Fahnbulleh’s district.

Control of Africa’s forests must not be sold to carbon offset companies (commentary)
- A forest carbon deal between Blue Carbon and the nation of Liberia would give the company exclusive rights to control 10% of the nation’s land mass for 30 years.
- Blue Carbon has also signed MOUs for similar deals with Tanzania and Zambia (and others) and combined with the Liberia deal, the land controlled by the company in these three African nations represents an area the size of the whole of the United Kingdom.
- “Carbon colonialism is a false solution to the climate crisis,” a new op-ed states. “The only real answer is to end our fossil fuel addiction by dramatically reducing our emissions, while financially supporting countries and local communities to protect their forests, rather than wrest control of them.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Bolloré blacklisted over alleged rights violations on plantations in Africa and Asia
- French logistics giant Bolloré SE has been deemed an unethical investment by some of Switzerland’s most powerful pension funds.
- Bolloré failed to act to resolve accusations of human rights abuses committed by its subsidiary, Socfin, around oil palm and rubber plantations in West Africa and Southeast Asia, the Swiss Association for Responsible Investments (SVVK-ASIR) determined.
- Investigators commissioned by Socfin recently found credible claims of sexual harassment, land disputes and unfair recruitment in Liberia and Cameroon; field visits to other sites will take place later this year.

Investigation confirms most allegations against plantation operator Socfin
- After visits to plantations in Liberia and Cameroon, the Earthworm Foundation consultancy has confirmed many allegations against Belgian tropical plantation operator Socfin.
- Investigators found credible claims of sexual harassment, land disputes and unfair recruitment practices at both of the sites they visited.
- Activists in both countries remain unsatisfied, saying the consultancy should have spoken to a wider range of community members and calling for Socfin to answer directly to communities with grievances.

Massive carbon offset deal with Dubai-based firm draws fire in Liberia
- According to a draft contract seen by Mongabay, Liberia may sign away the rights to nearly 10% of its total land mass to a United Arab Emirates-based firm for carbon offset development.
- The firm is owned by Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, the youngest member of Dubai’s royal family and an investor in energy projects across Africa and the Middle East.
- Environmental groups in Liberia say the deal could violate multiple laws, including those meant to protect community land rights.
- The deal comes as the UAE prepares to host the COP28 climate conference, where rulemaking around carbon markets will be a hot agenda item.

Can an app help Liberian artisanal fishers fight illegal fishing?
- Small-scale fishers in Liberia are using a data collection platform to document cases of illegal activity at sea.
- Artisanal fishers have long borne the brunt of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, some of it occurring within an inshore exclusion zone that extends 6 nautical miles from shore.
- Through the use of a mobile app called DASE, released by the NGO Environmental Justice Foundation, local fishers can geotag images and videos of incidents at sea and submit them to the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Authority for verification and possible investigation.
- Though the app has not resulted in any prosecutions yet, fishers say it is having a deterrent effect on illegal activities.

Conservationists decry palm oil giants’ exit from HCSA forest protection group
- Palm oil giants Golden Agri-Resources (GAR) and IOI Corporation Berhad have withdrawn from the High Carbon Stock Approach (HCSA), a mechanism that helps companies reach zero deforestation targets by distinguishing forest lands that should be protected from degraded lands that can be developed.
- The companies’ exit brings the total number of firms quitting the HCSA to four, with Wilmar International and Sime Darby Plantation stepping away from the committee in 2020.
- Environmentalists say this points to a startling industry trend in which industry giants are shirking responsibility for their harmful business practices.
- Both GAR and IOI say they remain committed to using the HCSA toolkit.

Palm oil plantation linked to Wilmar faces accusations in Liberia
- A report released by the Liberian and Dutch affiliates of Friends of the Earth says the Maryland Oil Palm Plantation in Liberia is abusing its workers and rural villagers.
- The company is owned by Côte D’Ivoire-based SIFCA, which is itself nearly 30% owned by the Singapore-based agribusiness giant Wilmar.
- Friends of the Earth’s Liberian affiliate said the company has polluted local waterways, beaten villagers it accuses of stealing palm fruit, and withheld pay from its contractors.

Liberian courts rubber-stamp export shipment of illegal logs
- On Jan. 16, a timber company won a controversial lawsuit in Liberia, when a court ordered forestry officials there to allow a shipment of illegally harvested ekki logs to be exported overseas.
- The ruling was the latest chapter in a years-long saga that environmentalists say points to a breakdown of regulation in Liberia’s forestry sector.
- An unpublished report on the case prepared by Liberia’s Ministry of Justice and obtained by Mongabay implicates senior Liberian officials in serious violations of laws meant to protect the country’s forests.
- Sources told Mongabay the seized logs have been the subject of a heated dispute behind closed doors between President George Weah’s administration and international donors.

At a rubber plantation in Liberia, history repeats in a fight over land
- Last year, Mongabay visited the Salala Rubber Corporation in Liberia, which has been accused of sexually abusing women working on its plantation and grabbing community land.
- Salala is owned by Socfin, the French-Belgian agribusiness giant that operates rubber and palm oil plantations across West and Central Africa.
- In 2008, Salala received a $10 million loan from the International Finance Corporation, which advocates say was used to clear community land.
- In 2019, 22 communities in and around Salala’s plantation filed a formal complaint with the IFC, but the investigation has dragged on for years.

In Liberia, a gold boom leads to unregulated mining and ailing rivers
- Liberia has abundant mineral resources and legislation aimed at preventing the most environmentally destructive forms of mining but little capacity to enforce those regulations.
- In the gold mining camp of Sam Beach, Mongabay observed damaged forests and rivers as a result of poorly regulated mining operations.
- Traditional landowners say they have little ability to participate in negotiations when mining agreements are made, while the community faces the environmental and social fallout of a mining boom.

Forests & Finance: Sit-ins, seeds over seedlings, and fuel-saving cookstoves
- Liberian communities affected by logging have staged a sit-in protest in front of the country’s ministry of finance, demanding unpaid royalties.
- Cookstoves and woodlots are the first step in a plan to halt deforestation in southern Zimbabwe.
- And a reforestation initiative experiments with providing Zimbabwean farmers seeds from indigenous trees rather than seedlings.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

Liberian villagers threaten to leave mining agreement, citing broken promises
- Communities in Liberia have threatened to withdraw from an agreement they made with a mining company two years ago, on the grounds that none of the promised benefits have materialized.
- Much of the dispute hinges on the interpretation of the agreement, which mandates Switzerland-headquartered Solway Mining Incorporated to make payments to communities, but doesn’t make clear how or when to do so.
- Solway denies any wrongdoing, while the mining ministry has questioned the relevance of the agreement, saying it’s not legally required for exploration to proceed.
- But community members say the company is “proceeding wrongly”: “Solway is a big disappointment. We don’t see the schools and health centers they promised us.”

Liberia loggers felling trees outside concession as government stands by
- A new report shows a case of illegal harvest of timber in Liberia has gone unpunished for more than two years.
- A 2019 audit had found that 14,000 m3 (494,000 ft3) of timber ostensibly from the TSC-A2 concession in Grand Bassa county was effectively untraceable, yet permits for the sale and export of much of the timber were still approved.
- Civil society groups are calling for tougher penalties against the companies involved, which they say appear to be happy risking modest fines against greater profits from illegal logging.
- They also say the case in Grand Bassa is emblematic of a widespread problem: “If you launch investigations into different community forests, the findings would be more illegalities.”

Scientists turn to eDNA to curtail the freshwater extinction crisis
- Freshwater ecosystems are understudied and underfunded, resulting in a lack of information on what species are at risk of extinction.
- The eBioAtlas program, a partnership between the IUCN and NatureMetrics, uses environmental DNA gathered from freshwater samples to figure out what freshwater ecosystems to conserve and what species to prioritize.
- So far, a pilot study in southeast Liberia has successfully picked up environmental DNA from nearly 170 species, including some that are critically endangered.
- The new data will provide up-to-date information for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and empower local communities to maintain ownership of their land and water resources.

Review finds palm oil firm Golden Veroleum cleared carbon-rich Liberian forests
- The largest investor in Golden Veroleum is Singapore-based Golden Agri-Resources, itself a branch of the Indonesian conglomerate Sinar Mas.
- In 2018, a Liberian civil society group joined with the U.S. and Netherlands chapters of Friends of the Earth in submitting a complaint to the High Carbon Stock Approach alleging that Golden Veroleum cleared high carbon stock forests in Liberia.
- The investigation was the first of its kind by the High Carbon Stock Approach, and found that Golden Veroleum cleared more than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of carbon-rich forests in Liberia’s remote southeast.

Liberia gave villagers control over their forests. Then a mining company showed up
- After Liberia’s civil war ended, the country overhauled its forestry laws, including passing legislation that gave impoverished rural communities the right to manage large tracts of rainforest.
- The reforms were part of the international community’s postwar reconstruction agenda, and donors have spent millions of dollars helping to implement them.
- Some of the new “community forests” were set up in the remote northern Nimba county, one of the densest biodiversity hotspots in West Africa.
- In 2019, a Swiss-Russian mining company arrived in one of them with a dubious exploration permit, exposing cracks in the reforms and raising questions about their future.

Watch: Rare wildlife caught on camera in a remote Liberian rainforest
- Camera traps laid by WCF captured video of 23 species, including western chimpanzees and a pygmy hippopotamus.
- WCF worked with local authorities and communities to place camera traps in 500 locations throughout the park.
- Grebo-Krahn National Park was established in 2017 as part of an effort to turn 30% of Liberia’s forests into protected areas.

Sounding the alarm about illegal logging? There’s an app for that
- Illegal timber accounts for 15% to 30% of the timber trade globally and is worth more than $100 billion. A significant share of this illegally harvested timber is sold in European markets.
- In the vast territories of both the Amazon and the Congo, the largest tropical rainforests in the world, authorities largely lack the capacity to monitor for illegal mining and logging activities.
- Using the customizable app ForestLink, people living within and around the forests can send alerts about illegal logging and mining activities to authorities and other stakeholders from remote areas without mobile connectivity or internet service.
- Community alerts have triggered more than 30 verification and enforcement missions by civil society organizations and local authorities in Cameroon, the DRC and Ghana in 2019 alone.

10-year plan hopes to give western chimpanzees a fighting chance
- The IUCN recently released its latest 10-year action plan for the critically endangered western chimpanzee.
- Poaching, habitat loss and disease were identified as the key threats to the species.
- These threats were found to be exacerbated by the high rate of population growth in West Africa, resulting in rapid agricultural expansion and a demand for economic development projects.
- The IUCN plan sets out nine strategies to be implemented between 2020 and 2030; they include filling research gaps, ensuring chimpanzees are considered in land use planning, improving legal protection, and raising awareness of the plight of western chimpanzees.

No more business as usual: Halt dangerous development projects that put our health at risk (commentary)
- Liberia’s Ebola outbreak provides a cautionary tale of how powerful industries exploit public health crisis for short-term profit.
- Madan argues that international norms of free prior informed consent must be upheld to ensure recovery efforts do not endanger peoples’ or the planet’s health.
- This post is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

Liberia expands a key elephant park again, this time with help of locals
- After the 2017 death of a forest ranger during a riot in a key national park, Liberian officials and conservation groups changed their community relations approach. Now they are working together to establish the park’s borders.
- Sapo National Park is one of the most important protected forests in West Africa.
- The park has a troubled past of illicit mining, hunting, and conflict between communities and conservation efforts.
- Now, the Liberian government is trying to work collaboratively with those communities to establish the boundaries of the park after a contested 2003 expansion.

Enough is too much: The growing case for investors to drop Golden Agri-Resources (commentary)
- Last year, when we published the report High Risk in the Rainforest, it was far from the first time that palm oil company Golden-Agri Resources (GAR) and its subsidiary Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) were called out for illegal deforestation, land grabbing, and the destruction of critical wildlife habitats. Our report, which detailed the clearance of dense forests and chimpanzee habitats, came several years into the companies’ serial destruction.
- Over a year later, both companies find themselves embroiled in controversies — and GAR’s investors continue to expose themselves and their beneficiaries to significant risks.
- The time has come for GAR’s financiers to acknowledge that, despite their engagement, things have gotten worse. If they understand the real material risks of their investments — risks both to forests and to their bottom-line — they need to engage much more aggressively to make GAR change its course. If they can’t do that, they need to get GAR, and companies like it, out of their portfolios.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Industrial palm oil investors struggle to gain foothold in Africa
- Twenty-seven concessions intended for industrial oil palm plantations in West and Central Africa have either failed or been abandoned in the last decade.
- Of the 49 that remain, less than 20 percent of the allocated land has been developed.
- Malaysian palm oil giant Sime Darby recently announced its intention to withdraw from Liberia after years of conflict with communities and environmental groups.

This land is ours: New law could end age-old injustice faced by Liberian women (commentary)
- Lofa County has vast swaths of fertile land, including rich, dense forest, and it was considered Liberia’s breadbasket before the country’s 14-year civil war, which affected this area more severely than any other in terms of population displacement and the destruction of infrastructure. Lofa was also the first county to be hit by the Ebola virus outbreak in March 2014.
- Yet, long pre-dating these profound traumas is an injustice that has shaped the lives of women here, and across Liberia, for generations: the denial of their land rights.
- The Land Rights Act, which President George Weah signed in September 2018, is the first Liberian law to recognize women’s rights to land and one of Africa’s most advanced land rights laws. It’s not hyperbole to say that it has the potential to fundamentally alter Liberian women’s life prospects and create a more just power balance in the country.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

‘We come from the earth’: Q&A with Goldman Prize winner Alfred Brownell
- In the early 2000s, Liberia’s government signed contracts worth tens of billions of dollars with resource extraction companies from across the world.
- ‘There was nobody in the government who really understood what value the forest has to the communities there,’ Brownell told Mongabay
- He argues that it’s time to invest in innovation and business models created by communities, to engage in extractive processes in forests without destroying them.

Fighting corruption in Liberia through on-the-ground reporting (insider)
- Editors from large outlets pass on environmental stories in Liberia all the time, making it harder to hold the powerful accountable for misconduct.
- There is often no substitute for traveling to the actual location of a story and gathering information from the field.
- Mongabay is one of the few outlets that understands the value of environmental field reporting and is willing to finance it.

Meet the winners of the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize
- This year is the 30th anniversary of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
- Also called the Green Nobel Prize, the annual award honors grassroots environmental heroes from six continental regions: Europe, Asia, North America, Central and South America, Africa, and islands and island nations.
- This year’s winners are Alfred Brownell from Liberia, Bayarjargal Agvaantseren from Mongolia, Ana Colovic Lesoska from North Macedonia, Jacqueline Evans from the Cook Islands, Alberto Curamil from Chile, and Linda Garcia from the United States.

Liberia’s new land rights law hailed as victory, but critics say it’s not enough
- Areas allocated to rubber, oil palm and logging concessions cover around a quarter of Liberia’s total land mass.
- Liberian activists and the international community have warned that land disputes on oil palm concessions were becoming a time bomb for conflict in the country, and urging lawmakers to give indigenous communities full rights to land the government had handed out as its own.
- In September 2018, President George Weah signed the Land Rights Act into law. The law is ambitious and clearly asserts the right to what is known as “customary land,” territory that can be claimed through oral testimony and community agreement.
- However, locked within the legislation is a flaw for those living on the quarter of the country’s land set aside for concessions: it is not retroactive. The law will not apply to those already living close to oil palm concessions, a difficult truth that is only just beginning to permeate thousands of villages in Liberia.

Norway divests from plantation companies linked to deforestation
- This week, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global – the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund – released its 2018 holdings.
- Thirty companies were divested from on the basis that they “impose substantial costs on other companies and society as a whole and so are not long-term sustainable.” These “risk-based divestments” appear to include four plantation companies: Olam International, Halcyon Agri Corp, Sime Darby Plantation and Sipef.
- These companies are involved in the production of commodity crops in tropical areas in Southeast Asia, West Africa, and Oceania and have been criticized for destructive land use practices like deforestation.

Liberia’s community forestry becoming a front for deforestation: Report
- A report released by Global Witness late last year alleges that Liberia’s forestry laws are being “hijacked” by logging companies.
- These logging companies can potentially put vast areas of Liberia’s remaining rainforests at risk of large-scale deforestation.
- There’s historical precedent for the concerns under the current law: in 2012, Liberia was rocked by a scandal over permits meant to enable private landowners to enter into logging agreements with outside parties.

An expanding frontier: Top 10 global palm oil stories of 2018
- The world’s palm oil supply used to come almost entirely from just two countries: Indonesia and Malaysia. But over the past couple decades, interest in the popular commodity crop has increased in other tropical countries around the world.
- Expansion in these new frontiers has had a variety of impacts, from habitat loss and degradation to alleged violation of the land rights of local communities.
- Here, in no particular order, are some of our favorite Mongabay stories about palm oil expansion around the world and the issues that affect it.
- A separate post will look at palm oil stories within Indonesia and Malaysia.

African wood industry: 10,000 micro-businesses need support for sustainable trade
- A survey of 10,000 east and west African wood processing micro-businesses found that sourcing legal materials and legal compliance to be key difficulties in maintaining environmentally-ethical and legal business practices.
- The micro-businesses, connected and represented by a network of 21 wood industry associations, found a widespread need for more support and access to resources.
- The two reports from the survey results were released on Oct. 22 by the Global Timber Forum, a Washington, DC non-profit that works to build the capacity of forest and wood-based industry associations.
- The findings were released just ahead of Forest Legality Week, an annual gathering that draws together global forestry leaders and experts in Washington, D.C.

Is S&P Dow Jones greenwashing conflict palm oil? (commentary)
- In its annual listing of sustainable companies released last month, S&P Dow Jones Indices included Golden Agri-Resources, a palm oil company financing operations in Liberia.
- However, reports and complaints about the company’s practices are leading some conservation and human rights organizations to question whether Golden Agri-Resources is operating in a sustainable manner. Accusations include widespread deforestation in Indonesia and Liberia, land grabbing, and violations of international sustainability principles.
- The company’s Liberian arm, Golden Veroleum Liberia, is no longer a member of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, after the certification body found ongoing violations including the use of coercion and intimidation to pressure villagers to sign agreements with the company, destruction of community sacred sites, and continued development on disputed lands.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Palm oil giant’s claim it can’t control Liberian subsidiary a ‘red herring,’ NGO says
- The Forest Peoples Programme, an NGO, recently filed five new complaints against palm oil giant Golden Agri-Resources. The complaints were filed in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO, of which the company is a member.
- One of the complaints targets the company’s Liberian subsidiary, Golden Veroleum, which recently withdrew from the RSPO after losing an appeal against a different complaint filed against it.
- The Forest Peoples Programme says it is egregious for Golden Agri to stay in the RSPO while its own subsidiary violates the organization’s standards. A spokeswoman for Golden Agri-Resources said the company has “no management control” over its Liberian subsidiary.

New report spotlights financiers of palm oil giant clearing Liberia’s forests
- A new report by Friends of the Earth highlights deforestation by Golden Veroleum Liberia, an arm of the billionaire Widjaja family’s conglomerate.
- The largest financiers of Golden Veroleum’s parent company include U.S. financial firms Vanguard, BlackRock, Kopernik Global Investors, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Northern Trust and CitiGroup; Dutch firms Robeco and Rabobank; and Asian firms China Merchants Bank, Maybank Indonesia and Bank Mandiri.
- Golden Veroleum cleared some 150 square kilometers of land between 2010 and 2016, according to the report.

Online mapping tool tracks land-use changes down to the farm
- The online mapping platform MapHubs stores maps and spatial data and makes them available to user groups for viewing, analyzing, and sharing with stakeholders.
- Users purchase a portal on the platform that allows the group to combine various public and private data sets in one secure place, produce maps, customize how the portal presents information, and receive support when needed.
- Groups have used the platform to identify deforestation from oil palm and cacao plantations and generate products such as time-lapse videos to show how regional deforestation can shift and expand.

Liberian park protects Critically Endangered western chimpanzees
- The establishment of Grebo-Krahn National Park in southeastern Liberia was approved by the country’s legislature in August 2017.
- The 961-square-kilometer (371-square-mile) park is home to an estimated 300 western chimpanzees.
- There are about 35,000 Critically Endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) left in the wild, and Liberia is home to 7,000 of them.

Western Chimpanzee numbers declined by more than 80 percent over the past quarter century
- Research published in the American Journal of Primatology earlier this month finds that the overall Western Chimpanzee population declined by six percent annually between 1990 and 2014, a total decline of 80.2 percent.
- The main threats to the Western Chimpanzee are almost all man-made. Habitat loss and fragmentation driven by slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial agriculture (including deforestation for oil palm plantations as well as eucalyptus, rubber, and sugar cane developments), and extractive industries like logging, mining, and oil top the list.
- In response to the finding that the Western Chimpanzee population has dropped so precipitously in less than three decades, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elevated the subspecies’ status to Critically Endangered on its Red List of Threatened Species.

Story-telling app and website help communities improve their ‘backyards’
- The TIMBY reporting platform applies the wide range of knowledge and experience of journalists, scientists, technologists, designers and security experts.
- Originally developed in Liberia to curb some of the impacts of illegal logging, the design and function of the TIMBY platform has been customized to fit the needs of the people facing conservation issues other locations.
- TIMBY has been used across the globe to address a wide array of issues, including environmental conservation in Chile, women’s health in Kenya, and information dissemination in Liberia.

In Liberia, a battered palm oil industry adjusts to new rules
- Palm oil companies signed a series of large contracts between 2008-2012 to develop plantations in Liberia.
- Disputes over land ownership by rural communities and the imposition of new environmental rules have forced investors to adjust their projections.
- The ‘High Carbon Stock’ approach, endorsed by environmental advocates, will restrict expansion in some cases.

Going viral: How advancements in Ebola disease detection in wild apes can help to prevent dangerous outbreaks
- Research using a non-invasive method of detecting Ebola virus antibodies from wild ape dung has shown that non-human great apes can survive the disease.
- Early detection and disease monitoring in wildlife populations can prevent the transmission of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola from being transmitted to humans.
- A more comprehensive assessment of health threats to wild great apes can help to determine whether the Ebola virus is of primary concern in a given gorilla or chimpanzee population.

From conflict to communities: Forests in Liberia
- Liberia holds 40 percent of West Africa’s Upper Guinean rainforest.
- National and international organizations have worked with communities and the country’s leadership to clean up the corruption that many say has pervaded outside investments in timber and commercial agriculture.
- Currently, the Land Rights Act, which would give communities more control over their forests, awaits approval, but its progress has been paralyzed, in part by this year’s elections.

The year in tropical rainforests: 2016
- After 2015’s radical advancements in transparency around tropical forests between improved forest cover monitoring systems and corporate policies on commodity sourcing, progress slowed in 2016 with no major updates on tropical forest cover, resistance from several governments in releasing forest data, and some notable backtracking on zero deforestation commitments.
- But even without the pan-tropical updates, we know that deforestation increased sharply in the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for the world’s largest area of tropical forest.
- Low commodity prices may have bought some relief for forests.

Corrupt logging practices in Liberia could mar new era in community forestry
- The agreements allow communities to sign contracts with logging companies on their own and entitling them to as much as 55 percent of the revenue stream from logging.
- Liberian government officials say that in the past year alone, 128 communities have applied for these forestry permits.
- In the remote Garwin chiefdom, one community may have been duped into giving away its land rights and future logging profits.

Proposed sale of timber from palm oil concession sparks alarm in Liberia
- News that Liberia’s forestry authority was considering allowing the sale of timber logged from oil palm concessions – called “conversion timber” — was met with opposition by international and local conservationists.
- Critics say this path could give industrial agriculture companies like palm oil producers a way to get around forest preservation measures and their own zero-deforestation policies. Company representatives deny these claims.
- Liberia has stepped up its environmental regulations in recent years after decades of conflict-fuelled deforestation and recent international pressure to keep its trees in the ground to help stave off climate change.
- A conversion timber request by palm oil producer Golden Veroleum Liberia was ultimately denied by the government, but conservationists worry this is only the beginning.

Liberia land policy a ‘challenge to national development’
- Liberia has struggled to implement comprehensive land policy or laws to address the problems.
- In 2009 the government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf set up a now-defunct Land Commission of Liberia to conduct land policy and regulatory reform.
- The Liberian Land Rights Act was proposed two years ago but is stalled in the legislature.

In unprecedented move, Michelin adopts zero deforestation for rubber sourcing
- Michelin Group, one of the world’s three largest tire companies, has just adopted a zero deforestation policy for its rubber sourcing.
- The move is significant because rubber is a major driver of tropical forest destruction through the conversion of natural forests for plantations.
- Forests in West Africa and Southeast Asia have been particularly hard hit by the commodity’s production.
- Activist groups had been slow to target rubber relative to other commodities like soy, palm oil oil, timber, and wood-fiber.

Indigenous and forest community leaders tour the EU to call for conflict-free palm oil
- The delegation revealed new evidence of the involvement of European institutions in financing palm oil grown on illegally deforested lands and highlighted accounts of human and environmental rights violations compiled by the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) and the Environmental Investigation Agency, both UK-based NGOs.
- Palm oil is used in thousands of products, from peanut butter and ice cream to household cleaning products, toothpaste, and shampoo. It is also one of the leading drivers of illegal tropical deforestation and social conflict.
- A disproportionate amount of so-called “conflict palm oil” is destined for the European Union, research has shown.

International forest conservation finance is flowing to Africa
- The DRC contains more than half of the total area of Congo rainforest, so it’s no wonder that as the world has started to take climate change seriously, the DRC’s forests are receiving increased attention.
- Half of all deforestation in Ghana is due to agricultural expansion, particularly for growing cocoa, which is why REDD+ financing is focused on improving the sustainability of cocoa production in the country.
- REDD+ financing to Liberia began to rise exponentially in 2014 after Norway pledged to greatly increase its funding to support Liberia’s forest conservation efforts.

Peace agreements often ignore natural resources, report finds
- A new report by Forest Trends has found that of the more than 800 peace agreements recorded since 1945, fewer than 15 percent address terms related to “natural resources”.
- In the handful of peace agreements that do address the “management of natural resources”, the implementation of the terms is minimal at best, report found.
- Since most peace agreements fail to formally address natural resources in their text, report notes that agreements that do get signed are often difficult to maintain, causing conflicts to re-ignite.

Norway extends forest conservation initiative
- At the Paris climate convention on Friday, Norwegian Minister of Environment and Climate Tine Sundtoft said the country would extend its International Climate and Forest Initiative through 2030.
- Norway has already put 17 billion krone ($2.5 billion) into supporting forest conservation initiatives.
- Norway said most of its spending will be targeted “towards paying for verified emissions reductions, in line with relevant UNFCCC decisions”. Norway already has performance-based agreements for reducing deforestation with Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Guyana, Indonesia, Liberia, and Ethiopia.

Can Liberia succeed in balancing palm oil with conservation?
- Liberia is a biodiversity hotspot, with 35 percent of the country designated as exceptionally high priority for conservation.
- The West African nation has seen an expansion of its palm oil sector in recent years, as the government has granted massive concessions to foreign companies to plant palm oil plantations.
- Only 1.3 percent of the Ministry of Agriculture’s budget has been designated for checking up on the industry’s environmental impact, which officials say isn’t enough for proper monitoring.

Palm oil company denies capitalizing on Ebola to advance Liberia operations
- Golden Veroleum Liberia allegedly took advantage of last year’s Ebola outbreak to expand its oil palm plantations
- The company denies it deliberately accelerated during the crisis and says communities wanted it there
- Golden Veroleum is a subsidiary of Singapore-listed Golden Agri-Resources, which operates primarily in Indonesia

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