Paper short abstract:

It is argued that new economic models of climate change and conservation will be ineffective without alignment with the deepest rooted cultural values of local land custodians. This paper focuses on the kola tree as a key embodiment of those values.

Paper long abstract:

The Gola forest is a boundary wilderness between Liberia and Sierra Leone. Today, it is prime conservation real estate, and considered a vital remnant of the highly threatened Upper Guinean Forest formation. It is far from being a pristine African rain forest and has a tangled settlement history dating back many centuries. The forest has played a key part in the emergence of the distinct peoples, languages and cultures of the Upper West African coast. How much of that history is relevant to current efforts to protect this globally important bioresource? Here, it will be argued that the human history of the forest is central to its conservation, because it encapsulates the story of those who are and must remain the guardians of the forest. Conservation cannot hope to attain legitimacy as a post-colonial project unless it is prepared to attain an in-depth and long-term understanding of the lives of the people who have lived in and around the forest for many centuries, and who are the products of a complex and at times fraught history of rival occupations. And yet attaining that state of empathetic understanding is a challenging task for conservationists since it requires that a number of politically and culturally sensitive issues are addressed. Above all, insight into historical silences and fragments of untold ancestral stories is required. Tread softly because this is sacred ground.