Today, and for more than 20 years, Liberia is being deforested by slash-and-burn agriculture, driven by rural poverty. By offering employment, affective smallholder programs and making degraded land productive, we hope to slow down and even stop the deforestation in the country.

Productive Agriculture

Productive agriculture is vital to ensuring Liberian food security, poverty reduction and rural economic growth and development. As a key component of its Poverty Reduction Strategy and program for economic revitalization, the Liberian Government encourages direct investment in the agricultural sector and investments to build the economies in the South-Eastern counties of the country.

Sustainable oil palm development will be a central growth pillar in rebuilding the Liberian rural economy and reducing poverty. It will not only provide income and create employment for the rural people; oil palm investment will also bring infrastructure, education and healthcare to the communities and raise the overall standard of living.

Golden Veroleum Liberia intends, in accordance with the concession granted by the Government, to develop, using sustainable methods, oil palm in the South-Eastern Liberian counties of Sinoe, Grand Kru, Maryland, River Cess and River Gee. In doing so, Golden Veroleum expects to provide more than 40,000 direct jobs; support Liberian smallholders in developing up to 100,000 acres of Oil Palm; build manufacturing and value-added industries; and create a vibrant and substantial new economic sector for Liberians. Employees and their families will receive housing, training, education, medical services, electric power, clean water and other benefits.

The development challenge will be approached with experience in the palm oil industry from Southeast Asia, combining the Liberian peoples familiarity with the crop, gained over the past hundreds of years, with the latest methodologies and technologies.

Sustainable Development Together with Communities

Golden Veroleum is committed to develop the Oil Palm sector in Liberia, and doing so in a sustainable manner. We wish to ensure a responsible and respectful balance between the needs of human development and that of preserving the valuable natural resources and the country’s environment. Our investment and land selection, conducted together with local communities, have and will carefully preserve original forest, bio-diverse areas, sacred and community lands.

• • Meeting the expectations of investors and partners
    • Modern commercial oil palm cultivation, processing and distribution requires significant investment. GVL has the responsibility to ensure that investment returns meet or exceed industry standards
  • Reducing rural poverty and bringing the beginnings of long-term prosperity, education and healthcare to communities where we develop
    • Bringing incomes and benefits, such as housing, water, electricity, medical care and schooling, to our employees that provide decent lives and security
    • Preserving and planning with communities land areas best suited for local food production, cash crops and other non-oil-palm agriculture
    • Lifting communities earnings, through the economic multiplier effects and supplier relationships
    • Establishing education and health care that is accessible to local communities
    • Together with partners, building a prosperous group of smallholders and independent farmers
    • Locating support functions, such as accounting and administration locally whenever possible, bringing modern jobs to the counties and districts.
  • Preserving the natural environment, helping to conserve flora, fauna, water and carbon in Liberia
    • Providing the foundation to preserve Liberia’s rich environment and rain forests, by strategic planning from the very beginning to conserve the highly forested, biospheres and forest zoned natural areas
    • Providing the incomes and livelihoods to local people that reduce their necessity of felling trees, opening land and burning in natural forests
    • Protecting and conserving high conservation value areas, such as riparian zones along rivers and streams, survivable tracts of primary forest and water sources
    • Not developing on high value and high carbon stock forests and high conservation value areas.
  • Respecting community self-determination, land rights, sovereignty, culture and local traditions
    • Completely adhering to Free, Prior and Informed Consent principle of community determination
    • Respecting the rights of communities and their adhering to their choice to say yes or no to development
    • Respecting and working with custodians of traditions and heritage, the Chiefs, the Elders and members of communities to guard against encroachment of sacred areas and shrines
    • Respecting family heritages and memorial properties, such as ancestral gravesites
    • Respecting farms, homesteads and personal properties
    • Engaging with communities on continuing basis to understand concerns and issues, discussing and resolving concerns and grievances, building trust as the foundation for a healthy and close long-term relationship with communities essential to the long-term viability and success of our business
    • Recognizing and respecting that communities’ views are not necessarily unanimous, and that there are differences of opinionwithin even small communities. We encourage democratic principles, and respect community decision making processes while respecting the role and rights of minority opinions to be heard
    • Upholds the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigineous Peoples
  • Developing the skills and careers of our Liberian employees and suppliers, especially of the people originating from our partner communities
    • Offering employment and training first and foremost to the communities where we work
    • Developing skills upgrade and career paths, starting from school, adult literacy education, vocational skills, management traineeships, to local people
    • Providing scholarships for university and graduate-level education in agriculture and related trades
    • Commitment to becoming Liberian, locally-managed company achieving international standards
    • Encouraging local enterprise and supply of our needs, to keep the economic benefits in the local region and inside Liberia
  • Practicing the best methods of legal compliance, regulatory adherence and procedures in Oil Palm agriculture, founded on highly developed skills, systems and professional attitudes
    • Being fully compliant with Liberian law and our concession agreement with the the Republic of Liberia
    • Adhering to or exceeding Liberian Environmental regulations
    • Adhering to or exceeding international recognized best practices including the RSPO Principles & Criteria, Code of Conduct and its procedures and enhancing the applicability and relevance of these standards in Liberia
    • Practicing modern Oil Palm agriculture, with the most applicable proven methods
  • Building value added industries and helping the country of Liberia develop beyondbeing a supplier of raw materials
    • Developing infrastructure that brings jobs and economic activity beyond agriculture, such as port, mill, refinery and factory operations
    • Planning for manufacturing and industries especially in the local districts and counties, from the very start
    • Preparing, allocating and contracting sites for future value added facilities
  • Continuing improvement in what we do, throughconstructive engagement of credible organizations who share all or some of these objectives, whether partnering with us, challenging us, or critical of us
    • Accepting that we are a new industry to Liberia and Liberians, and that the Oil Palm industry itself has been the source of controversy elsewhere, and working to explain, discuss and improve our work continuously
    • Meeting and establishing dialogue with any groups and NGO’s who wish to understand what we do and to monitor or inspect what we do
    • Immediately taking action to correct any specific deficiencies that may be identified
    • Stopping practices or methods that may not be the best, and replacing them with international best practices
    • Being ready to listen, but also to engage and stand by what we believe in