Agroecology: Friends of the Earth Liberia/ Sustainable Development Institute (SDI)
01 January, 2001
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01 January, 2001
Liberia is a highly food insecure country and with the rapid expansion of landgrabbing agribusinesses rural communities are facing the worst impacts as their access to land is threatened
Friends of the Earth Liberia/ Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) works with farmers organisations such as ROPPA and the Farmers Union Network (FUN) to promote small scale family farming and advocate for respect for customary land rights. SDI has worked with FUN to bring all stakeholders including civil society, farmers, producers and government together to examine the issues within the sector. SDI has continued to collaborate with FUN including the international ROPPA conference (Sept 11-14 2013) ten years on from the Maputo Declaration called ‘Dialogue meeting on progress achieved in the implementation of Maputo engagements’. This conference created an advocacy platform to exert pressure on the Liberian government in relation to budget allocation for agriculture as committed to under the Maputo Declaration. For the last decade SDI has campaigned for legal recognition of customary land rights and as a result has played a key role in Liberia’s land reform process. For example the organisation is a part of the Land Commission’s taskforce on land reform. The 2013 Land Rights Policy formally recognises customary land ownership and provides legal protection for customary land rights equal in law to private land rights. The draft Land Law is currently with the President for review. This work includes a specific focus on women and property rights which are specifically included within the draft Land Law.
Since 2009 SDI has worked with 20 communities or clans in Rivercess County to identify, protect, document, and manage their customary land and natural resources. SDI began this project by working with communities to decide how they wanted to self-identify, harmonise their boundaries, develop bylaws and land management plans, and create local governance structures on land and natural resources. This has included identifying and marking shared forest areas, designating reserve forest areas for future use, and creating rules on how to sustainably manage these forest areas. In 2012 SDI signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Land Commission to agree on a documentation process. In 2014 SDI expanded its community land protection programme to two additional counties.
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