Cancelling the Liberian VPA would put Liberian forests and communities at great risk
15 octobre 2025
Reuben Sei Waylaun, Media and Communication Officer, Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), one of Fern’s partners in Liberia explains outcomes of a national consultation which defined the prerequisites for a strong, complementary Forest Partnership.
Liberia signed its Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union (EU) in 2011, as it emerged from years of conflict during which timber revenues fuelled war. Now, the European Commission wants to backpedal, announcing the proposed termination of the Liberia VPA and putting more than a decade of progress at risk. Liberian civil society are united in opposing this.
On the ground in Liberia, civil society organisations and forest communities would like to remind the European Commission that the VPA has fundamentally restructured the whole forest sector. According to them, the Commission’s proposal to cancel the VPA disregards this progress. Citing slow progress and limited timber trade flows, it ignores the key law reform and law enforcement gains achieved, as well as the VPA’s renewed progress under the Boakai administration.
The proposal also disregards and misrepresents the strong opposition to cancellation from the Liberian government during the Joint Implementation Committee (JIC) in November 2024, where the VPA’s cancellation was presented as a done deal. Since then, the Liberian government, via its Ministry of Foreign Affairs has written to the Commission voicing concerns.
More importantly, by removing clear international accountability and by cutting support to legal reform, law enforcement and deliberation, the cancellation of the VPA puts Liberian forests and the communities that depend on them at great risk.
In Liberia, the VPA has resulted concretely in a traceability system, LiberTrace, to verify that all timber is produced in compliance with national laws. It has created space for multistakeholder participation in the forest sector, bringing together government, logging companies, civil society organisations (CSOs), and forest-dependent communities. It has improved transparency and accountability, promoted legal reforms and enforcement (of the Community Rights Law and the Land Rights Act), and provided communities with both income (US$4.3 million) and a stronger voice in forest governance.
Simply put, the VPA has been transformational.
The Commission proposes replacing the VPA with a ‘forest partnership’ that has not yet been drafted. As it stands, this strikes us as a face-saving proposal. The VPA and Forest Partnership are fundamentally different tools. One is a cross-government, legally binding trade agreement; the other is a Memorandum of Understanding (see MoUs for existing Forest Partnerships) developed between technical staff in the Commission and Liberia’s Forest Development Authority (FDA). The Forest Partnership cannot, and will not be able to replace the VPA.
However, the Commission’s proposal rightly points to the importance of integrating current challenges and zero deforestation objectives into EU-Liberia cooperation.
This is why these CSOs and communities propose that the VPA and Forest Partnership be complementary, as is already the case in the Republic of Congo.
In keeping with this, CSOs and communities have been engaging constructively about how to build a strong Forest Partnership. Over the summer, the NGO Coalition of Liberia, the National Union of Community Forestry Development Committee (NUCFDC) and the National Union of Community Forestry Management Bodies (NUCFMB), conducted a national consultation, focussing on what to include in the Forest Partnership.
This resulted in a briefing that should be read by all relevant European and Liberian decisionmakers. SDI is happy to share it here.
Our consultation outlines six prerequisites for a successful EU-Liberia Forest Partnership:
- Inclusive and accountable governance, with multistakeholder mechanisms, including representation for women and marginalised groups
- Legal coherence and strong enforcement, anchored in customary rights, covering mining and agriculture and aligning with Nationally Determined Contributions (climate)
- Sustained and Inclusive Financing Mechanism for the Forest Partnership
- Strong monitoring and accountability provisions
- Capacity-building for all stakeholders
- Full government engagement and donor coordination
We hope such consultations will be used as a blueprint by the EU to develop the Forest Partnership inclusively. Moreover, we stress that the Forest Partnership should make use of existing multistakeholder forums created through the VPA, including the Liberia Implementation Committee, a VPA multistakeholder forum bringing together key government ministries, civil society, communities and businesses. We urge the EU to reconsider the termination of Liberia’s VPA, and to build a strong, complementary Forest Partnership.
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Catégories: Forest Watch, Partner Voices, EU Partnerships, Liberia