Liberia

Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL), a palm oil company, holds hundreds of thousands hectares of land as an agricultural concession. GVL is now pushing to allow logging for export in its concession. Were the government to permit the sale of timber from the legal clearing of forest for oil palm concessions, it would simplify the laundering of illegal timber and dramatically increase the pressure on Liberia’s forests.

Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL), a palm oil company, holds hundreds of thousands hectares of land as an agricultural concession. GVL is now pushing to permit logging for export in its concession. International environmentalists are calling for a ban on the export of such timber to prevent the further destruction of rainforests.

“The world’s forests remain under threat from illegal logging… Illegal logging perpetuates corruption, undermines livelihoods, fuels social conflict, deprives governments of revenue and erodes countries’ natural resource bases.” Chatham House Report, July 2015 (1)

 

Peasant farmers deprived of their lands launch a series of occupations on Socfin’s plantations in Cameroon, Liberia, Cambodia and Côte d’Ivoire between the end of April 2015 and the annual shareholder meetings of the Socfin group (27 May) and the Bolloré group (4 June). The Bolloré group is the biggest shareholder (39%) of Socfin, which has industrial oil palm and rubber plantations, among others in the countries where the protests are taking place.

Dear friends, our friends from Liberia are requesting our support. The Jogbahn Clan in Liberia is fighting to keep their home. A British palm oil company wants to clear their land without their permission. Add your voice to a petition to tell the palm oil company and its major shareholders that the world is watching. NO means NO!

In late 2013, a group of representatives of African, Indonesian and international NGOs met with members of La Via Campesina and the African Biodiversity Network in Calabar, Nigeria, to address the massive expansion of industrial oil palm plantations on the African continent and discuss, in particular, the situation in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cameroon, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon.

 

Governments are opening the doors to corporations for planting vast areas of land with oil palm plantations. This trend is not only happening in West and Central African countries, but is even expanding to parts of Eastern Africa. Large scale oil palm plantations are already causing serious environmental and social impacts in some countries, resulting in loss of community rights over their territories.

The three leading Liberian civil society organizations Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU), and Social Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development (SESDev) released a statement on January 31, 2013, calling for a review of Liberia’s agricultural policy. Since 2006, the Government of Liberia has entered into binding contracts – known as concession agreements – with three major oil palm producing foreign investors: Sime Darby (Malaysia), Golden Veroleum (Indonesia), and Equatorial Palm Oil (UK).