Monrovia - The Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) was signed by the Government of Liberia and the European Union (EU) in 2009.

A Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) is a legally binding bilateral trade agreement between the European Union and timber-producing countries outside the EU, such as Liberia. The purpose of a VPA is to en­sure that timber and timber products exported to the EU come from legal sources. The agreements also help timber-exporting countries stop illegal logging by improving regulation and governance of the forest sector.

With funding from the European Union, Swedish Cooperation (SIDA), UK government (UKAid) and through the FAO EU-FLEGT Programme, the agreement seeks to equip affected communities with skills and tools to be able to monitor the benefits they receive through logging to communicate and share information on progress and robustly defend their right under the VPA Legality Assurance System (LAS).

Specifically, the agreement geared towards helping communities acquire skills through a combination of training and peer-mentoring in financial and project management. It will also provide them tools and protocols for effectively monitoring the enforcement of social agreements and specific skills in community-level forest monitoring. This will enable them to account for the benefits they receive from commercial logging and defend their rights where they are denied.

The 12 months project title “Tracking Progress: Strengthening Community Capacity to monitor benefits from commercial logging in Liberia,” will improve the quality and participatory processes in communities by prioritizing the contribution of women and youth across all activities.

The National Facilitator for the National Union of Community Forestry Development Committees, Mr. Andrew Y. Y. Zelemen and Ms. Mariatou Njie FAO Representative in Liberia signed the agreement on behalf of their respective institutions.

During the signing ceremony in Monrovia, Mr. Andrew Y.Y. Zelemen welcomed the initiative and thanked FAO for addressing the capacity gap in affected communities, enabling them to fulfil their critical role in ensuring that benefit sharing obligations under the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) are fulfilled with .

 “This agreement will address some of the key challenges of affected communities on how to monitor their social agreement signed with logging companies and monitor the forest in term of production and operations.” 

He stressed that the new funding from FAO will enhance capacity of communities to monitor production and manage what they received from these companies. “It will also strengthen the capacity of Community Forestry Development Committees (CFDCs) in forest monitoring skills, reinforce the engagement and influence of non-state actors, and build synergies with activities supported under these related projects.”

For her part, the FAO Representative in Liberia, Ms. Mariatou Njie said FAO is committed to supporting the Government of Liberia improve and strengthen the forestry sector.  She said that the FAO-EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Programme seeks to reduce and eventually eliminate illegal logging.

The Programme works in support of the European Commission’s Action Plan on FLEGT to promote the legal production and consumption of timber by granting funds to projects, and assisting them at all stages from the original design through to the outcome. Decreasing illegal logging contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals by alleviating poverty (SDG 1), ensuring food security (SDG 2), mitigating climate change (SDG 13) and managing a forests sustainably (SDG 15).