The aim of the Soils4Liberia project is to improve the management and use of land and soil resources for resource conservation, sustainable intensification of agricultural production, and enhanced resilience to climate change. This will be achieved through improved policy formulation and decision-making on stakeholder interventions based on reliable information on Liberia’s land and soil resources, as well as recommendations provided by the project.

Therefore, the impact indicators will be policies and action plans for resource conservation, agricultural development for prioritized value chains (e.g., rice), and mitigation of and adaptation to climate change (climate-smart agriculture), utilizing the land and soil data provided by this project.

The project’s specific objectives will include:

• Establish a fully functional Land and Soil Information System that contains reliable, current primary data and facilitates managing soil data and information, generating information products according to user requirements.
• Raise stakeholders’ awareness of and insight into the value of land and soil data and information, and capacitate them in using such information for decisions regarding improved land and soil resource use and management, enhanced soil-related ecosystem services, intensified agricultural production, improved climate resilience, and better protection of land and soil resources.
• Establish a functional centre that generates and manages relevant and reliable information on Liberia’s land and soil resources to inform policy formulation, planning of interventions, and execution of actions for agricultural development, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and resource conservation, including strengthening Liberia’s capacity to conduct soil surveys and land use inventories autonomously.

From the onset, the project will engage with stakeholders in view of specific objective two. Stakeholder consultation serves two purposes:

• To gain insight into the requirements for soil-related data and information, as well as the capacity of the stakeholder community to use such data and information effectively.
• To define “use cases” through which stakeholders will be involved in developing practical applications of soil data and information for their own purposes. Insights into user requirements for soil information will determine the data and information products to be generated and their specifications. This, in turn, will inform the design of the LSIS in the broader sense, including the field campaign design, specification of data to be collected (including desired soil analyses), and the workflows and data processes to generate the required information.