Liberia had an estimated 4.3 millionhectares of forests in 2011, comprising approximately 50percent of Liberia’s landmass. These forests support veryhigh levels of biodiversity, provide a wide range ofecosystem services (for example, bush meat, medicines,construction materials, and charcoal), and generateemployment and revenue from commercial and chainsaw logging.Encouraging inward investment while striking a sound balancebetween different interests, respecting the legal andcustomary rights of local people, and conservingbiodiversity represents a major challenge. This projectfocuses on the mining sector, which has the potential tobecome a significant engine for growth and broader-baseddevelopment. It explores the feasibility of implementing anational biodiversity offset scheme in Liberia to helpminimize adverse impacts on biodiversity and ecosystemservices resulting from mining. A Liberian national offsetscheme will entail the application of a common methodologyto ensure that conservation benefits are at least equivalentto biodiversity losses due to mining investments. The reportis presented in seven chapters. Chapter one givesintroduction. Chapter two discusses the conservationimperatives for Liberia and conveys a sense of the qualityand extent of biodiversity within Liberia. Chapter threedescribes the challenge of securing conservation outcomes inLiberia as well as the prevalence of threats tobiodiversity. Chapter four discusses the potential forbiodiversity offsets to help secure conservation outcomes.Chapter five covers the legal, policy, and institutionalframework in support of biodiversity offsets. Chapter sixdiscusses the methodological aspects of implementing anational biodiversity offset scheme, together with thechallenges of securing and effectively managing sources offunding. Chapter seven summarizes the report’s suggestednext steps to implement a road map for biodiversity offsetsin Liberia.
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