GAYE TOWN, Liberia – Deep in the Liberian bush, there’s a dispute about what to do with a big swath of rainforest. The conservation group Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) and Liberia’s Forestry Development Authority (FDA), backed by the EU, are looking to establish a new 172,000-hectare (425,000-acre) national park. However, advocacy NGOs say they’re bypassing the land rights of nearby communities. It’s an argument with potentially serious repercussions for biodiversity in Liberia. The proposed Kwa National Park would be one of just a handful of strictly protected habitats for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) and pygmy hippos (Choeropsis liberiensis). The land it would protect is under real threat — commercial cocoa farming is destroying forests in the region at an accelerating pace. Some people from the surrounding villages have sent migrant workers inside Kwa’s proposed boundaries to build new cocoa farms. They now want the Liberian government to excise these areas from the park. “We want the [Forestry Development Authority] to push the boundary line back small,” said Tommy Yarkpawolo, an elder from the tree-ringed village of Gaye Town. He has a 600-hectare (1,482-acre) farm with 30 workers inside Kwa that just earned him more than $400 — enough to start building a new mud-brick house, he said. Cacao saplings underneath burned trees in the proposed Kwa National Park. Photo by Ashoka Mukpo / Mongabay. Many of his neighbors oppose the idea of moving the boundary back. They told Mongabay the negotiations with WCF and the FDA were…This article was originally published on Mongabay

As the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity’s 17th summit opens in Yerevan, Armenia, on Oct. 19, what’s at stake for Africa? In 2022, parties signed the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework, agreeing to maintain, restore, and substantially increase the area of natural ecosystems and end human-induced extinction of threatened species; to sustainable use of biodiversity; to fair and equitable sharing of both monetary and non-monetary benefits derived from genetic resources; and to establish adequate means to implement the framework — including finance, scientific cooperation and building capacity of all parties. The summit, which runs through Oct. 30, marks the halfway point to the deadlines for a first set of 23 action-oriented global targets. The progress report is not encouraging: Fewer than half of countries say they are on track to meet their self-designed biodiversity targets. “The report shows that many of the critical elements of progress, including finance, capacity, cooperation and data — are still missing in action,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a press release accompanying the organization’s State of Biodiversity Action report. Three of the world’s “megadiverse” countries are in Africa: The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and South Africa make the list of 17 countries that are each home to at least 5,000 of the world’s plant species that are endemic. None of the three met the initial 2024 deadline for a national biodiversity strategy as set out under Kunming — South Africa still hasn’t submitted an action plan. The headline goal — to see 30% of…This article was originally published on Mongabay