Read the article on the Front Page Africa website

In this article, James Otto, of SDI comments ‘that community forestry agreements will lead to more aggressive logging. He thinks that the [Forestry Development Authority] is more focused on revenue generated from the forest than conserving it or using its resources to benefit locals. “How can it be possible that we are taking money from the Norwegian government to fight climate change and at the same time be approving more than 125 concessions?”.’

Saah David, Norway project coordinator in Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority, ‘vehemently refutes Otto’s assertion. He says commercial logging is also a part of the Norway grant. “If communities decide to do commercial logging, we will help them do commercial logging but to reduce the footprint of carbon. We as a government cannot coerce communities to do conservation when communities do not choose to do conservation.”’

David Young, International Forests Advisor in Global Witness says community forestry contracts “also create an obvious risk that logging companies will exploit communities by offering to pay for the boundary demarcation in exchange for rights to log the forest once the CFMA has been approved.”

Yet Gertrude Nyaley, Head of community forestry at the Forestry Development Authority states “At no point in time companies are allowed to interact with these people,”