Since 2009, the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a civil society organization based in Monrovia, Liberia, has collaborated with RRI to support local communities in securing their customary land areas. Through its work with communities affected by concessions, SDI realized that a lack of reliable information regarding the amount of land within a given community creates a false impression that there is an unlimited amount of land, and that land not being used can be allocated to companies. In communities who are already in confrontation with concessionaires, this misinformation only exacerbates existing tensions and creates a rift between community members who are willing to allocate land to investors and those who are not—thereby creating “for” and “against” factions within communities, with no middle ground.

With the support of RRI, SDI launched a project in 2016 to reduce this information gap, working with local communities to map their customary land and strengthen their bargaining power to negotiate fair deals with the private sector. This project has pioneered the use of TIMBY, or This Is My Backyard, an innovative reporting system that SDI developed in collaboration with a team of journalists, filmmakers, and designers. TIMBY allows local communities, who use a mobile application, to collect primary source evidence of their experiences with land rights and natural resources. Their reports are uploaded to the system’s platform, a catalog of sorts, with real-time, geo-tagged recordings, images, and stories documenting the reality of communities on the ground facing threats to their land and livelihoods.

In Grand Bassa County, SDI has supported the people of Jogbahn Clan to map their lands to resolve a dispute between the community and Equatorial Palm Oil. Read more about SDI’s efforts below.

As seen on Sustainable Development Institute:

On January 27-28, 2015, the people of Jogbahn Clan in District #4, Grand Bassa County, carried out a GPS land mapping exercise with Equatorial Palm Oil. This was the culmination of a lengthy battle between Jogbahn Clan and EPO over ownership of their land.

The mapping process formally demarcated the precise location of the border between Jogbahn Clan’s land and EPO’s plantation. EPO has agreed that no cultivation of palm oil will occur on land owned by Jogbahn, after a long battle waged in the press and through protests, culminating with President Sirleaf asking the company to leave the land alone. SDI staff arrived in Grand Bassa late on Tuesday, January 26, and worked with the community for two days to help ensure the mapping process went smoothly and that EPO respected the community’s boundaries.

Boundary mapping is a crucial aspect of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent – the process by which communities are given the opportunity to understand and make judgments about disruptive natural resource projects. Jogbahn clan had already given its answer to EPO: a steadfast “no,” opening space for the boundaries to be mapped.

Aside from a minor dispute over the status of negotiations between EPO and two towns, Paye’s and Beyohgba, the mapping was smooth and peaceful. Presumably, Jogbahn Clan and EPO are now in a formal state of agreement that their land will remain in their hands and under their control.

The mapping is the culmination of a years-long dispute between EPO and residents of District 4 in Grand Bassa County. In a microcosm of the troubles that the oil palm industry has faced in Liberia, EPO initially refused to acknowledge Jogbahn’s claim to ownership of its land, claiming it was the rightful landowner as per its concession agreement with the Liberian government. SDI and Jogbahn clan publicized the dispute and made a formal complaint to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, leading to the President’s action and the GPS mapping.

EPO’s concession area is below—marked in green—with Jogbahn Clan’s land to the east.

To learn more about SDI, please visit: www.sdiliberia.org.

To learn more about TIMBY, please visit: timby.org.