Strategy 6: Land-use planning (LUP)

Until now, western chimpanzees have rarely been considered in LUP processes, at either theoretical or practical levels. The overlap of the western chimpanzee’s geographic range with proposed development corridors (Laurance et al. 2015) demonstrates the considerable potential costs to chimpanzees – 10% of the population lives within 25 km of one of the four proposed (Heinicke et al. 2019a; and see Figure 3, p.18).

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In addition, in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, in particular, there is extensive overlap between areas with suitable environmental conditions for chimpanzees (defined by Junker et al. 2012) and areas suitable for agricultural development, such as oil palm plantations (Wich et al. 2014). Furthermore, even when the needs of chimpanzees are considered, this is through environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) on a project-by-project basis, and the cumulative impacts these projects impose upon chimpanzees are typically ignored.

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There is, therefore, an urgent need to integrate chimpanzee conservation at a variety of scales. This will involve three levels of planning (Lanjouw 2014): strategic environmental assessments (SEAs), systematic conservation planning (SCP), and mitigation and offsets. The first section of this strategy presents actions specifically concerning the first two levels, and the second section addresses mitigation and offsets. It is of paramount importance that the conservation community gets involved at the earliest stage possible of potential SEAs to ensure avoidance of chimpanzee habitats being affected at the outset.