Targeted payment for forest conservation in Liberia

Liberia holds one of West Africa’s richest natural resources: the Upper Guinea Forest. Home to endangered species and crucial to the livelihoods of over 80% of Liberia’s rural population (Forest Development Authority, 2022), forests cover nearly 68% of the national territory (FAOStat, 2025). Yet, the country is experiencing rapid forest loss—between 2001 and 2023, Liberia lost 2.36 million hectares of tree cover, particularly in Bong and Lofa counties (Global Forest Watch, 2024).

This environmental degradation threatens both biodiversity and the well-being of forest-dependent communities. However, Liberia’s institutional and financial capacity to respond is limited. Roughly 45% of the land is held under a community forestry regime. While the law grants communities the right to own and manage forestland, enforcement and governance remain weak. Local community leaders controls forest access, but in many areas, there are no formal maps of community boundaries, and accountability is low. This leads to unregulated land use and, often, destructive practices.

Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) are incentive-based financial mechanisms, developed in the 1990’s where those who benefit from ecosystem services pay those who preserve or enhance them. This project introduces and tests a new approach to Payment for Ecosystem Services tailored to Liberia’s challenges: communal forest ownership, weak governance structures, and limited monitoring capacity. By financially compensating communities for conserving forest areas, PES schemes can promote sustainable land management.

Led by Parley Liberia, in collaboration with researchers from the University of California Los Angeles , University College London and New York University, the project will evaluate two types of contracts of Payment for Ecosystem Services in communities across Lofa and Gbarpolu counties identified as highly vulnerable to deforestation. The innovation has two core components. First, the project aims at creating a machine learning system able to analyze satellite imagery and forest clearing trends to identify the communities most at risk of deforestation. And, an accountability mechanism embedded within one type of contract with the community (PES+ ) to ensure leaders supports and community feedback.

FID’s funding will support:

• The rollout of PES (basic) and PES+ (accountability mechanism added) contracts in 120 communities
• A randomized controlled trial comparing the impact of the two contract types to a control group
• Community surveys and monitoring using both field inspections and satellite data
• Development of training materials and implementation manuals for potential scale-up

The research team will conduct baseline, midline, and endline surveys with both community leaders and members over a three-year period. The design includes 190 communities, covering an estimated population of 50,000 people in two rural areas of Liberia.

By the end of this phase, the project aims to produce rigorous evidence on how different PES models affect forest conservation, governance, and livelihoods in Liberia in order to scale it up. The main expected results include:

• Reduced deforestation in targeted community forests through financial incentives for conservation
• Improved governance of forest resources by integrating community feedback into PES contracts
• Greater awareness of the economic and ecological value of conservation among rural populations
• Increased monitoring capacity using remote sensing and community engagement
• Adoption of sustainable farming practices as alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture Parley Liberia maintains strong ties with national and local authorities and will engage them throughout the project, from implementation to policy dialogue and dissemination in their scaling strategy.

The project and research team includes the following members: Gregory Kitt, Executive Director, Parley Liberia, Prince Williams, Research & M&E Officer, Parley Liberia, Alexandra Hartman, Professor of Political Science, UCL, Darin Christensen, Associate Professor of Public Policy, UCLA, Cirus Samii, Professor, Oxford University, Avi Ahuja, doctoral student at the Department of Politics at NYU.

Photo of Frank Eiffert / Unsplash