One could simply rent a forest for conservation

From the newsletter

Liberia has launched a two-year pilot project to pay forest communities directly for protecting their rainforests of about 50,000 hectares. The non-market pilot project is backed by Ireland and provides direct, upfront payments to 28 communities to support community-led forest protection and advance global climate and biodiversity goals.

• Forests in Liberia are threatened by logging and agriculture which have immediate cash returns to communities. Carbon markets, seen as alternatives, are under criticism for lack of transparency and unfair sharing of benefits with the locals.

• The non-market model under Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement will enable communities to earn $1.50 per hectare annually, totalling about $75,000 each year across the project region. This payment can be reduced if forests are cleared. Compliance is monitored through land-use agreements and satellites.

More details

• The project builds on Liberia’s land laws passed after the civil war, which gave villages the right to own and manage their forests together. Thanks to these laws, the 28 target communities have been able to officially register their land and decide which areas will be kept as protected forest. In those zones, activities like logging or making charcoal are strictly banned. 

• Local residents will form patrol groups to watch over the forests once they receive training from Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority. These community monitors will use key indicators like settlement inside the protected areas and report any violations. To make enforcement stronger, funders will also track progress remotely using satellite images that show where forest is being cleared. Site inspections can be carried out on the ground. If a community fails to protect its forest, the annual payment is reduced.

• Half of the money will go straight into bank accounts set up by the communities themselves and they will collectively decide how to spend it. The other half will cover training and technical support from local organisations. While the payments may seem small compared to global climate finance, the $75,000 the communities expect each year is about twice what a logging company would have paid them just to rent the land.

• This is a replicable model for the effective involvement of communities in conservation and community-led conservation finance across Africa. The project takes a different path from carbon markets. Instead of selling carbon credits to companies, it uses Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement, which allows what’s called a non-market approach. This means no middlemen and no costly monitoring systems. Communities are paid directly for keeping their forests standing. 

• For many African countries, this is important because schemes like REDD+ and carbon credits have been slow and expensive. REDD+ projects take years to set up and spend huge amounts of money on audits and paperwork. Liberia’s model is simpler. Communities get up-front payments in exchange for clear conservation rules they can enforce themselves. That makes the system quicker to start and expand. It also depends on recognising the rights of local and Indigenous people. In Liberia, communities have legal ownership of their land and that secure footing is what makes this kind of conservation possible.

Our take

• What’s missing is long-term money. Right now, the Liberia pilot is funded only by Irish Aid, and that support lasts just two years. After that, the project has no guaranteed backer. 

• This makes the model fragile, because communities cannot plan for the future if the money suddenly stops. It also risks sending the message that conservation finance is just short-term charity. 

• For this approach to truly scale across Africa, governments and big donors will need to commit longer-term funding. Otherwise, even promising experiments like this may collapse before they show their full potential.