LIVELIHOODS ZONING “PLUS” ACTIVITY IN LIBERIA A SPECIAL REPORT BY THE FAMINE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM NETWORK (FEWS NET) January 2011 LIVELIHOODS ZONING “PLUS” ACTIVITY IN LIBERIA A SPECIAL REPORT BY THE FAMINE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM NETWORK (FEWS NET) January 2011 This publication was prepared by Julius Holt of FEG Consulting, Rachel Cipryk, Salif Sow and Laouali Ibrahim for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), in collaboration with the Liberian Ministry of Agriculture, the Liberian Institute for Statistics and Geo‐information Services, USAID Liberia, WFP, FAO and partner NGOs. The authors’ views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. Page 2 of 47 Contents Acknowledgements .........................................................................................................................3 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4 Methodology .................................................................................................................................. 6 National Livelihoods Zone Map.........................................................................................................7 National Seasonal Calendar ..............................................................................................................8 Livelihood Zone 1: North‐East Rice Intercropped with Cowpeas and Groundnuts and Palm Oil...............9 Livelihood Zone 2: North/Central Rice with Cassava and Market Gardening........................................11 Livelihood Zone 3: South‐East Rice with Cassava ..............................................................................13 Livelihood Zone 4: Coastal Plain Cassava with Rice and River Fishing..................................................15 Livelihood Zone 5: Coastal Fishing and Cassava ................................................................................17 Livelihood Zone 6: Rice Intercropped and Forest Hunting..................................................................19 Livelihood Zone 7: Plantain Cash Crop with Food Crops ....................................................................21 Livelihood Zone 8 ‐ Rubber and Charcoal with Food Crops..................................................................2 Livelihood Zone 9 ‐ Monrovia Peri‐Urban: Petty Trade, Market Gardening and Casual Employment ........4 Annex I – List of clans per livelihood zone .........................................................................................6 Annex II: Livelihood Zoning Workshop Participants...........................................................................25 Acknowledgements This work was done by Famine Early Warning Systems Network in collaboration with its partners Government of Liberia including the Ministry of Agriculture, the Liberia Institute of Statistics & Geo‐Information Services, CILSS and the World Food Programme. Page 3 of 47 Introduction The two geographically prominent kinds of livelihood zone – rice dominant and cassava dominant – reflect a fundamental ecological divide in the country. This is between the coastal plain and the elevation of the interior up to the borders with Guinea and Ivory Coast. Apart from a couple of high ridges, the elevation is mostly below 500 meters above sea level, but it is enough to tip Liberia into a general slope across which the major drainage of the country runs, many of the major rivers originating in the highlands of southern Guinea and finally issuing into the Atlantic at points along the Liberian coast. Cassava is grown in greatest volume on the coastal plain, whilst rice (virtually all rain‐fed or in swampland rather than irrigated) dominates the higher hinterland. However between the north‐west, centre and the south‐east there are sufficient differences in the crop production scene to warrant a division of the main rice areas into three zones. But it has to be said that in comparison to the dramatic ecological differences within other countries, e.g. the high mountain to low rangeland of Kenya and Ethiopia, or the Sahara sands to savannah/guinean vegetation in Sahel countries, Liberia has only moderate variation in ecology, rainfall patterns and hazards. If we have settled on nine zones (including the periphery of Monrovia itself) it is by emphasizing certain special features of areas which nevertheless all sit squarely on the base economy of rice‐with‐cassava or cassava‐with‐rice. On the other hand that difference in the base economy is strong enough for it not to be masked by the fact that Liberia is a heavy net importer of staple rice, and the consumption of imported rice, so far from being confined essentially to an urban population, is part of the diet of rural people across the country. Apart from climatic or ecological differences, a major element in distinguishing economic areas is their relative access to the Monrovia market, which inter alia encourages local rice sales in the northern half of the country. That market, for farm produce, fish, goods and even labor, represents the demand of as much as one‐third of the national population. No County town comes close to competing economically, and so Monrovia’s influence penetrates deep into the county, even as far as the little plantain‐based livelihood zone (LZ 7) on the north‐west border of Nimba County with Guinea. The Rubber and Charcoal LZ 8 exists precisely because a) rubber plantations were situated on land not too far from the port and b) the nearby city demand for charcoal particularly favors the road‐oriented population who have access to abandoned rubber trees. At the other end of the country, the South‐East Rice (LZ 3) is largely defined by its isolation from Monrovia and the resulting absence of marketing opportunities. There is no paved road towards the capital along which goods can easily be moved, and indeed local villages are cut off even from local centres during the rains. Given that some combination of rice and cassava cultivation is ubiquitous, it is sometimes secondary products that distinguish a livelihood zone. In the hunting zone (LZ 6) the people are actually essentially farmers by vocation, even often nearly self‐sufficient in food. But the income from bush‐meat is considered important enough and distinctive enough to justify making this a separate zone, and once again Monrovia is an important market for this product at least in dried form. If we do not have an inland fishing zone on the same basis, it is not because fishing is insignificant but because it is widespread across the rivers and creeks of the Page 4 of 47 entire coastal plain and beyond. There is no particular area of any size with an intensive inland fishing economy. Hunting is also widespread around the country, but in the four areas which are combined as the hunting zone, the resource and its profits are far above average. By the same token, sea‐fish earnings by people on and near the coast are far more fundamental to the livelihoods of coastal villages than inland fishing is to the villages of the cassava belt (LZ 4), and so the coastal fishing zone (LZ 5) has been distinguished. But it is not always an easy matter to decide whether a certain form of production or income should generate a separate zone. There is some temptation to compromise by creating sub‐ zones, although that was avoided by the participants in the workshop who together created the draft livelihoods map. This is fortunate, because sub‐zones can easily become a step along the road to recognizing numerous localized differences, so that a quite unwieldy map of thirty or forty ‘zones’ would replace the map of nine. In this instance the original draft had both the plantain zone mentioned above and a charcoal zone separate from the rubber zone. After field verification and discussion it has been proposed to keep the plantain zone but to merge the charcoal zone with the rubber zone, on the basis that the intensive charcoal element represents a limited, road‐oriented population within the rubber‐dominated area. But one could reasonably make the argument for a plantain and a charcoal sub‐zone. In this respect it is perhaps mining that is most problematic. Surface gold mining, and to a lesser extent diamond mining, are found in many localities across the country. But there are certain areas of concentration, and two large areas were proposed in the workshop to be combined as a mining‐plus‐food‐crops livelihood zone separate from the rice‐dominant zones. Field verification has frankly brought mixed information as to the importance of mining to ordinary rural households as opposed to a minority who may invest most of their available labour to mining work, joining numerous in‐migrants at mining camps. Our proposal for the present is to accept that mining brings important income in these areas but does not dominate the rural economy: we recognize it as an element , but do not make mining a separate livelihood zone. This means that these mining areas are subsumed in the wider rice‐dominant zones LZ 2 and LZ 3, although gold mining is not equally spread around those zones. It is a compromise until further field information can tell us quite how mining and the rural economy are linked. As was properly stated in the opening address to the workshop: “This is a work in progress”. Page 5 of 47 Methodology This Livelihoods Zoning “Plus” product