The government of Liberia through the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) and her Sierra Leonean counterpart are expected to sign an amended Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that obligates the both parties to protect the Gola Forest National Park.
The signing ceremony of the amended MOU which takes place at the C. Cecil Dennis Hall at the Liberia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tuesday February 18, 2020 is expected to be graced by high ranking government officials of both parties.
The signing of the amended MOU represents a renewed commitment of both countries to effectively manage the Gola Forest Transboundary Landscape. It can be recalled that both Liberia and Sierra Leone initially signed an MOU in October 2011 thereby committing themselves to share the conservation and management responsibilities of the forest landscape.
Named and styled the “Gola Transboundary Peace Park” the forest landscape is home to the Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone and the Gola Forest National Park in Liberia.
Together, the forests span more than 150,000 hectares and represent one of the largest remaining blocks of the Upper Guinea Forest. When other smaller forests are considered, including community forests and the proposed Foya Nature Reserve in Liberia, this massive forest landscape measures more than 350,000 hectares, equivalent to about a half million football fields.
Recognized as a biodiversity hotspot, these shared forests are home to more than 899 vascular plants, 49 mammals, 327 bird species, and 43 amphibians. Many of the wildlife and plants are threatened or critically endangered, including rosewood, the forest elephant, West African chimpanzee, western red colobus monkey, and pygmy hippopotamus.
The forest host many of our territorial Mano River Union states’ watersheds and plays a critical function through the range of ecosystem services that it provides and contributes to the mitigation of climate change impacts. Thus, its health is of global importance.
In 2011, the presidents of Sierra Leone and Liberia signed an MOU on cooperation in the management, research, protection and conservation of the Greater Gola Transboundary Peace Park.
In doing so, they noted their “mutual interest in continuing and strengthening joint management and conservation of national parks close to or contiguous with the border for the purpose of conserving shared resources and ecosystems.”
With the gazettement of the Gola Forest National Park in 2016 in Liberia, there was renewed interest in jointly protecting and managing the forest.
The Forestry Development Authority is grateful to the USAID-funded West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) program which supported several transboundary muti-stakeholders meetings in advance of the signing on Tuesday 18th of February 2020.
In 2018, WA BiCC supported a meeting of technical representatives to lay the groundwork for the first meeting of the planning and Coordination Committee, including the development of a draft workplan.
Liberia formally indicated its portion of the Gola forest in April 2018 attended by officials of government and its partners.
In 2019, WA BiCC supported the first meeting of the Coordination Committee in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Through signing the amendments, Liberia and Sierra Leone will refocus their efforts on preserving and sustainably managing their shared resource.
Together, they will seek to curtail the main drivers of the forest’s continued deforestation and degradation and biodiversity loss, including illegal hunting and poaching, mining, chainsaw logging,shifting cultivation/agricultural encroachment, and water pollution.
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