Gola Rainforest National Park

The Gola Rainforest spans the Sierra Leone-Liberia border and holds one of the last large blocks of Upper Guinean rainforest, home to more than 300 bird species and Critically Endangered western chimpanzees. In 2009, the two governments, emerging from a decade of civil wars that had used the forest as a rebel corridor, pledged to jointly protect it as a Transboundary Peace Park, formalized by a 2011 memorandum of understanding and reaffirmed in 2020. A UN Peacebuilding Fund-backed programme (GOLA-REAP), launched in 2025, is now investing $4 million to combine forest protection with cross-border community development, while REDD+ carbon-credit revenue supports forest-edge livelihoods on both sides of the border.