Among the potential casualties of the EU’s decision to unilaterally terminate its Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) timber trade agreement with Liberia, is the damage it will inflict on the West African nation’s fight against climate change, says Jonathan W Yiah, Coordinator of the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), the Monrovia-based natural resource management NGO.
Liberia possesses the majority of the largest rainforest in West Africa, the Upper Guinea Forest. “We have the challenge of managing it well not only for the good of Liberia and the region, but the whole world,” Yiah says. Transparent, accountable forest management – which the VPA plays a crucial role in facilitating – is essential for doing so.
The VPA, which Liberia started negotiating with the EU in 2009 and which entered into force on 1 December 2013, is the first scheme of its kind to address the root causes of illegal logging which fuels deforestation and civil unrest in Liberia. During Liberia’s civil war, which ended in 2003, for instance, a UN study found that 86% of Liberia’s timber trade was controlled by arms dealers. The VPA also guarantees that local communities – who in Liberia have historically suffered from outsiders exploiting their forests – benefit from them and are involved in decisions concerning them.
“Colonial behaviour”
News that the EU is intent on ending the VPA first emerged in October, causing consternation and anger in the Liberian government, as well as among those working to protect forests and peoples’ rights. Speaking anonymously, an official from one ministry told Fern the decision was “disrespectful”. Another government official called it “colonial behaviour”.
Concerns about the environmental and human cost of the EU abandoning the VPA were high on the agenda when Yiah (and other CSO members from West and Central Africa) met with EU policymakers in Brussels at the end of January. Yiah says some of those he met were not even aware of the decision.
“Those with actual decision-making powers, from the European Council and MEPs, were either uninformed or ill-informed about the Commission’s decision to end the Liberian VPA. This is surprising, because in Liberia, the termination is being presented as a done deal,” he says.
“This is a bilateral agreement, but the EU say they intend to cancel it without even undertaking an assessment of the challenges, how they can be addressed, or how Liberia’s new government has been making an effort to do so. Their process is completely unilateral. That does not [represent] a good partnership.”
Jeopardising progress
Yiah outlines some of the numerous benefits he says the VPA has brought Liberia.
“Although the VPA didn’t initiate [forest] reform in Liberia, it has totally strengthened it. For example, benefit-sharing with communities [distributing a percentage of revenues from timber concession holders fairly and equitably to local people] took so long to happen, and only happened because the VPA was in place. The government withheld community funds for five years until a strong case was made through the VPA multi-stakeholder process, and Liberia’s then Vice President and now President, had to step in before things start started to roll.” These funds have helped provide vital basic amenities for impoverished rural communities in a country with one of the lowest GDPs per capita in the world.
While there have clearly been challenges along the way, the VPA has been a catalyst for reform, strengthening local peoples’ land tenure, and providing a tool for civil society and forest communities to have a voice in decisions that affect them, says Yiah. In the past year, VPA platforms have also been used to discuss the requirements of the EU Deforestation Regulation and how to prepare for it.
“The EU withdrawing from the VPA will actually put all this progress in jeopardy. If it happens, so many of the gains that have been made over the years, in terms of strengthened government accountability for better forest management and distributing benefits, will be undermined.”
Yiah is very concerned about the Commission’s intention to replace the VPA with a “Forest Partnership”. “These two instruments are fundamentally different. The VPA is legally binding, includes Parliamentary oversight and gives civil society and communities a mandated seat the table. The forest partnership is a non-binding umbrella instrument which is not designed for oversight nor inclusion. In the Republic of Congo, the Forest Partnership is built on the VPA rather than replacing it. We ask for the same complementarity in Liberia.
“We ask the Commission to reconsider their unilateral decision to terminate the VPA, and work in good faith with the newly elected Liberian government and with Liberian civil society to address illegalities in and deforestation in our forests.”
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Categories: News, Forest Watch, Partner Voices, EU Partnerships, Liberia