Saving our forest campaign kicks off

A local civil society group, Community Development Initiative (CDI) has launched a one – year campaign in Grand Cape Mount County, aimed at creating awareness on the protection and management of Liberia’s forests.

The group will focus on raising awareness on climate change and its adverse effects on social environmental standards. Speaking at the launch in Sinje, Garwula District over the weekend, CDI Executive Director Lawrence Bondo said the project will focus on four communities which include Sarwelor, Bendu, Tallah and Dewien chiefdom.

“One thousand forest dependent indigenous community members and local actors with adequate awareness on the basis of climate change and its adverse effects will benefit,” the group leader said.

Mr. Bondo continued that ten strong and capable participatory forest management cooperatives of the forest dependent indigenous communities were established and are operational.”

Bondo says the initiative is a collaborative project and its workings will also focus on Lake Piso and the Gola Forest for a year. “We will be impacting over one hundred thousand people about the Reed+ program that is focused on deforestation and forest degradation,” he notes.

According to Mr. Bondo, the idea is about reducing climate change, saying “we” cannot have communities being flooded in the midst of a number of changes in climate that are due to the cutting down of logs and trees without reforestation.

The project is valued US$50,000 and is being funded by Mainyoito Pastoralist Integrated Development Organization in Kenya.

By Bridgett Milton–Edited by Winston W. Parley