Ireland’s ambassador to Liberia, Gerard Considine, launched a three-year coastal resilience project on 30 September. The €1.5 million (about $1.68 million, or £1.27 million) commitment funds mangrove restoration and livelihood support across Sinoe and Maryland counties in Liberia’s south-east. The project runs until August 2029, under the title “Restoring Coastal Resilience: Community-led Mangrove Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods in South-East Liberia.”
Considine made the announcement at Sinkor Palace in Congo Town. “By investing in people, we protect coastlines,” he told attendees. The framing reflects a deliberate design choice. Rather than funding mangrove planting alone, the project pairs ecological restoration with direct support for the fishing and farming households whose livelihoods depend on healthy coastal ecosystems. Ireland’s embassy in Monrovia has built a modest but consistent footprint in Liberian environmental programming in recent years. Officials there describe coastal projects like this one as climate adaptation spending, not conventional conservation aid.
Mangroves as both barrier and bank
The project plans to restore 50 hectares of mangrove forest and establish 20 hectares of coconut plantations. That gives coastal communities an additional income source while the mangroves mature. Roughly 3,500 people are expected to benefit directly. Women are guaranteed at least 40% of participant and leadership roles. The target is meant to ensure the gains reach the women who often lead coastal fish processing and trading in Liberia’s coastal towns.
Practical support includes approved fishing nets, boat engines and energy-efficient fish-drying facilities. New Village Savings and Loan Associations will give women structured access to credit. Ten schools across the two counties will host nature clubs, extending the project’s reach to a generation that will inherit whatever coastline condition the restoration work leaves behind.
Local and international partners share delivery
The Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia is leading delivery on the ground, with technical support from the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. That pairing of a Liberian conservation body with international technical expertise reflects a model increasingly common in West African coastal projects. Donor funding is channelled through domestic organisations, rather than managed directly by outside agencies, a structure both groups say builds local capacity that outlasts any single grant cycle.
This is not Liberia’s only current coastal climate initiative. The Green Climate Fund separately approved a $17.2 million grant earlier this year for a climate resilience project centred on Monrovia, the capital. Multiple donors are now treating Liberia’s roughly 580km coastline as a priority for climate adaptation spending, rather than a lower-tier concern behind inland development needs, officials from both initiatives say.
Liberia’s south-eastern coastline has faced mounting pressure from both erosion and unsustainable harvesting of mangrove wood for fuel. Conservationists across the region link that pattern to the loss of natural storm buffers that once protected fishing villages from surge damage during the rainy season. Mangrove loss also strips away a key nursery habitat for the fish stocks coastal households rely on. Fishing families lose their storm protection and a share of their catch in the same process. Whether the three-year timeline proves long enough for newly planted mangroves to mature will only become clear well after the project’s 2029 close. Mangrove seedlings typically take five to ten years to form the dense root systems that give mature stands their storm-buffering strength. Project organisers have factored that lag into their planning. It is part of why the livelihood support measures are front-loaded into the project’s early years, well before the mangroves themselves mature.
