<
https://news.mongabay.com/2025/09/liberia-has-a-new-plan-to-protect-its-rainforests-can-it-work/>
"Around half of West Africa’s remaining rainforests are in the small coastal
nation of Liberia. They’re home to species like western chimpanzees and pygmy
hippos, valuable stands of hardwood — and hundreds of thousands of people.
Despite years of logging reforms backed by foreign aid, Liberia lost more than
38,000 hectares (94,000 acres) of humid primary forest in 2024 , driven by
factors including agriculture, unsustainable logging and mining.
A group of 28 communities in Liberia may have a solution, and it’s an elegantly
straightforward one: Pay them to keep the forest standing.
Under a new pilot project in southeastern Sinoe county, the government of
Ireland is set to pay those communities $1.50 per hectare (2.5 acres) of forest
they protect annually for the next two years. Fifty thousand hectares (124,000
acres) in two community-controlled rainforests are included in the pilot, with
residents hoping to collectively receive $75,000 each year — about twice what a
logging company would have paid them in land rental fees.
The money will be spent on development projects chosen and funded by the
communities themselves, with some oversight by the Liberian organization
managing the pilot.
That organization, Integrated Development and Learning, hopes it can find
enough funding to scale up the pilot to a total of 200,000 hectares (494,000
acres) of rainforest.
“It’s taking some responsibility and saying these communities are doing
something for all of us, for the planet and environment, and therefore they
need to be rewarded. They need to be incentivized for that,” said Silas Siakor,
a long-time environmental campaigner and founder of IDL."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
