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Strengthening Forest Management in Post-Conflict Liberia

Forests Monitor Liberia Workshop Report, March 2008

This report provides a summary of a 5‐day training course delivered by Forests Monitor (FM) to key Forestry Development Authority (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agents and NGO representatives, on 24-29 April 2007, together with key findings and issues raised by participants and a set of FM’s own recommendations for future action. This training was supported by Fauna and Flora International (FFI) as part of the organisation’s EU funded Liberia forest programme. It was preceded by a preparatory visit to Liberia in October 2007, which involved meetings between FM and key stakeholders at FDA, EPA and civil society groups in order to conduct a training needs assessment and develop a plan for delivering the training described in this report.

The training program received very positive feedback from the participants, and the main comment was that more training is needed, both in terms of time and the number of FDA staff and NGOs included. Important issues raised by participants included issues of personal and job safety when investigating illegal activities, corruption by higher level officials, and the ambiguity of the NFRL 2006 on aspects such as public access of forestry sector information for civil society monitoring and the rights of communities over forest resources.

Forests Monitor’s main conclusion is that in terms of realistic law enforcement, Liberia is not ready to re‐start commercial logging. Despite attempts to put in place checks and balances (e.g. LiberFor CoC) there is a real risk that illegal logging will begin again in earnest. FDA staff do not have the equipment or the skills, many of the laws are unclear and ambiguous, especially with regards to forest use permits, community rights, and transparency and public access to forest‐related information by civil society. Furthermore, the role of LiberFor will be critically undermined by running the system in parallel with the ‘legalised’ checkpoint/CoC system currently in place for pit-sawn wood.

FM recommends that before commercial forestry re‐starts: a community forestry law is finalised and approved, the current system for taxing and transporting pit‐sawn timber outside of LiberFor control is stopped, and that forest use permits are defined in more detail in the law. Most importantly, FM recommends that the capacity for law enforcement of the FDA is significantly improved in order to be able to cope with industrial logging, and that an Independent Monitor is set up in Liberia to help ensure legality in the forestry sector and to provide ongoing technical support to FDA FLED officers.

FM thus strongly recommends that international donors express support for Liberia’s interest in setting up an independent monitor of forest law enforcement and governance and provide urgent political, technical and financial support for taking this process forward in the short term...........

DOWNLOAD FULL WORKSHOP REPORT (English pdf, 410 KB).

Liberia Training Manual

The Training Manual used for the workshop in Liberia is available to download in full, or as individual chapters (if your connection is slow, you may want to consider the seperate chapters). See the table below for a list of available downloads connected to this report.

This project is implemented in partnership with FFI Liberia and with funding from the European Commission.