Liberia
Liberia
* Mha = million hectares
In Libera, Indigenous Peoples and local communities owned 580,000 hectares of forestland as of 2017. [Source: RRI 2018 (At a Crossroads)] In 2018, Liberia passed the Land Rights Act, which codifies communities’ rights to their lands. However, implementation of the Act has not moved forward.
3.06 million hectares of land were formally recognized as owned by Indigenous Peoples and local communities as of 2015 (or 31.73% of total country area). [Source: RRI 2015 (A Global Baseline)]
Liberia voted for the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Peoples, but has not ratified ILO Convention 169.
Secure community land rights are an intrinsic component of poverty alleviation goals and the achievement of national and global economic development goals.
Almost a third of the world’s population manages and depends on community-held lands. Land use by rural communities is more sustainable, benefits more people, and generates better environmental outcomes than large-scale plantations and extractive projects. Secure community rights are therefore vital to poverty reduction and sustainable development. [Source: RRI 2017 (Securing Community Land Rights)]
Where Indigenous Peoples and local communities have secure rights, climate outcomes improve: deforestation rates are lower and carbon storage higher.
Globally, Indigenous Peoples and local communities manage at least 17 percent (nearly 300 billion metric tons) of the total carbon stored in the forestlands of assessed countries—a global estimate that is 5 times greater than shown in a previous analysis of aboveground tropical forest carbon, and equivalent to 33 times the global energy emissions of 2017. [Source: RRI et al. 2018 (A Global Baseline of Carbon Storage in Collective Lands)]
In Liberia, 0.2 billion metric tons of aboveground, belowground, and soil carbon is stored in forestlands that are legally owned or designated for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. [Source: RRI et al. 2018 (A Global Baseline of Carbon Storage in Collective Lands)]
Indigenous and community women’s land and forest rights are crucial for the achievement of global development goals.
According to a legal analysis of 30 low- and middle-income countries, governments are not respecting indigenous and rural women’s tenure rights and are failing to meet international obligations to do so. Countries reviewed in Africa (11 countries) provide the most consistent affirmation of women’s property rights and greatest recognition of women’s community-level dispute-resolution rights, but they also afford indigenous and community women the weakest community-level inheritance and voting rights. [Source: RRI 2017, Power and Potential]
Insecure land rights can result in conflicts that threaten sustainable + inclusive economic development as well as corporate profits.
More than 35% of Liberia’s land has been allocated by the government for timber, mining, and oil & gas drilling operations. [Source: TMP Systems 2014 (Communities as Counterparties)]
In an examination of 15 agriculture concessions covering 6,911.93 square kilometers, people were already living in 100% of them. [Source: TMP Systems 2014 (Communities as Counterparties)]
In an examination of 222 logging concessions covering 32,758.16 square kilometers, people were already living in 100% of them. [Source: TMP Systems 2014 (Communities as Counterparties)]
Insecure land rights are driving conflict, insecurity, and a human rights crisis.
The Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, published a special report in 2018 on the attacks and criminalization of Indigenous Peoples defending their lands and rights. It highlighted numerous reports that have emerged from Liberia of land rights and environmental defenders being attacked, tortured, and unjustly imprisoned. It also spotlighted the case of Alfred Brownell, founder of Green Advocates International, and several Green Advocates staff members who faced repeated harassment from police. [Source: Tauli-Corpuz 2018 (Liberia case study)]