Liberia

The Forestry Development Authority (FDA) is the authority responsible for the management and conservation of Liberia’s forest resources, which includes management of the forest policy, the forest legislative framework and the enforcement of forest laws. The National Forestry Reform Law provides for the issuance of five types of licenses by the FDA to carry out activities over forested land, as follows:

• Forest Management Contracts (FMC): license for forest exploitation issued land areas over land between 50.000 and 400.000 hectares that does not include private land, generally for a period of 25 years;
• Timber Sales Contracts (TSC): license issued over a land area not more than 5000 hectares that does not include private land, for a period of 3 years.
• Forest Use Permits (FUP): a license issued for small scale forest exploitation, research, NTFP activities or other uses on an area less than 1000 hectares;
• Community Forest Management Agreements (CFMA): license issued to communities for the purpose of community based forest management, smaller than 50.000 hectares; However, the Community Rights Law allows for CFMAs to be more than 50.000 hectares. In that case the contracting of a logging company must follow a public bidding process and must be signed by the President, as is the case for FMCs.
• Private Use Permits (PUP): a license issued to private land owners (individual, group, community) to extract wood. There is no specific regulation for handling PUPs. These permits allow land owners to enter into contracts directly with logging companies, although government approval is needed. It is estimated that PUPs covered approximately 30 per cent of Liberia’s forests between 2011 and 2012. Because of massive mismanagement of the PUPs posing a threat to the efficient, effective, and sustainable management of the country’s forests, a moratorium was set out on the issuance of PUPs for activities involving or related to the felling or export of logs or under any PUPs granted, authorized or approved by the Forestry Development Authority.

Contract holders need to comply with all major pre-qualification requirements in order to obtain the exploitation contract, including tax clearance, an annual business registration certificate, and a prequalification certificate. FMCs and TSCs can be obtained via tender, whereas a PUP is awarded upon written permission of the land owner. After all conditions are met the contract to use or harvest forest resources is signed between the contract holder and the FDA.

The contract holder must uniquely number and record each tree on the stock survey and block map. The block map and stock survey are verified by the Legality Verification Department of the FDA, which is currently operated by SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance SA). Contract holders are only allowed to fell trees when they are in the possession of a valid Annual Harvesting Certificate. This certificate can only be obtained after the contract holder has, among others, an approved annual operations plan, and, for FMCs, an approved management plan covering the area to be harvested. The annual operations plan shall specify the volume and species of the annual coupe, or the annual block of harvest in case of FMCs.

Once the annual harvesting certificate has been issued, the contract holder is allocated barcoded log tags and is permitted to commence harvesting at the locations indicated on the block map. The log tags are affixed to the butt end of the log and another to the stump. Details of the harvested tree are recorded on the felled tree data form, and include species, dimensions and log ID. Tree data forms are completed when trees are felled, prior to cutting into initial long logs. These are recorded on a log data form. Once trees have been felled, labelled, measured and felled tree data forms have been filled in at the stump, the operator can extract tree to log landing. Also after cross-cutting the log receives an ID tag, so that all logs are traceable back to the stump or location where it was growing.

For transport a waybill form is completed, including barcode, species and dimensions, as well as official barcoded stickers and references to the bar-coded tag numbers of the wood products of the load. These waybills are checked by the LVD.

Facilities mechanically processing the wood need to be in the possession of an annual sawmill permit. The operator of the sawmill receiving the logs keeps records of all wood raw materials entering the site (Sawmill log input form), as well as records of stock, processing and exit of processed products (Sawmill output form). Processed products are labelled with official barcoded PVC labels. The details of inputs and outputs of the processing facility are uploaded in the COCIS (Chain of Custody Information System) of the LVD. This system is also used for the recording of exports of logs, timber and other wood products. Exporters of these products shall be in the possession of an annual export registration. The exported products shall be accompanied by an Export shipment specification log, a Proof of payment of export fees, and for sawn timber an Export specification-sawn timber.

The below listed key documents are based on the applicable legislation and are considered to play a key role in demonstrating legal origin.

Harvesting

Trade and export

There are no export bans or quota in place.

There are no CITES listed tree species for Liberia.

During Liberia’s prolonged civil war, timber revenues were misappropriated and used to sustain the conflict. In 2003 the United Nations (UN) Security Council attempted to deal with this by imposing sanctions on all imports of timber from Liberia. Since then, Liberia has made significant efforts to reform the forest sector including completing a comprehensive review of the regulatory framework, developing a national timber traceability system (LiberFor) to track timber production and revenue payments and reforming the FDA. The UN Security Council lifted sanctions in 2006 to recognise Liberia’s progress and to open the way for Liberia to rebuild its forest sector. In order to support the forest reform process, Liberia and the EU entered into negotiations for a voluntary partnership agreement in March 2009. The Agreement was signed in July 2011, and ratified in December 2013. Since 2013, SGS was hired to further develop the CoC system and the rest of the TLAS. It ensures traceability from a standing tree to the point of export, and provides evidence to support issuing export permits for timber coming from Forest Management Contracts (FMC), Timber Sales Contracts (TSC), PUPs and CFMAs.

Liberia currently has no independently certified forests.

• De Wit, P. (2012) Land Rights, Private Use Permits and Forest Communities. Land Commission of Liberia
• Forest Development Authority – Ten Core Regulations
• Forest Legality Alliance risk tool - Liberia
• Liberia: Regulation banning export of selected species as logs (FDA Regulation No. 18).
• Liberia Forestry Development Authority
• Liberia – EU (2011) Voluntary Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Liberia on forest law enforcement, governance and trade in timber products to the European Union
• Liberia and the European Union. Joint Annual Report 2014. Implementing the Liberia-EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement.
• Liberia’s Community Rights Law with respect to Forest Lands.
• Liberia’s National Forestry Reform Law of 2006
• WWF (2012) A guide for the timber exporter and importer from Ghana and Liberia.