Liberia had an estimated 4.3 million hectares of forests in 2011, comprising approximately 50 percent of Liberia's landmass. These forests support very high levels of biodiversity, provide a wide range of ecosystem services (for example, bush meat, medicines, construction materials, and charcoal), and generate employment and revenue from commercial and chainsaw logging. Encouraging inward investment while striking a sound balance between different interests, respecting the legal and customary rights of local people, and conserving biodiversity represents a major challenge. This project focuses on the mining sector, which has the potential to become a significant engine for growth and broader-based development. It explores the feasibility of implementing a national biodiversity offset scheme in Liberia to help minimize adverse impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services resulting from mining. A Liberian national offset scheme will entail the application of a common methodology to ensure that conservation benefits are at least equivalent to biodiversity losses due to mining investments. The report is presented in seven chapters.
- Chapter one gives introduction.
- Chapter two discusses the conservation imperatives for Liberia and conveys a sense of the quality and extent of biodiversity within Liberia.
- Chapter three describes the challenge of securing conservation outcomes in Liberia as well as the prevalence of threats to biodiversity.
- Chapter four discusses the potential for biodiversity offsets to help secure conservation outcomes.
- Chapter five covers the legal, policy, and institutional framework in support of biodiversity offsets.
- Chapter six discusses the methodological aspects of implementing a national biodiversity offset scheme, together with the challenges of securing and effectively managing sources of funding.
- Chapter seven summarizes the report's suggested next steps to implement a road map for biodiversity offsets in Liberia.