Forests have played a central role in Liberia’s recent history. In the late 1980s, Liberia dissolved into a civil war. While the exploitation of forest resources was not the explicit cause of civil war, it helped prolong it by financing participants in the conflict. As the war proceeded, accountability in the timber industry deteriorated. Records—including for financial transactions between the government and timber contractors—were no longer kept. Forest access roads were built and trees harvested without regard to ecological consequences. The lack of accountability enabled corporations to evade taxes and fees (companies were exporting larger quantities of timber than they were reporting to the government). The government mismanaged and misallocated timber revenues. Liberian timber became a major source of financing for the civil war. As a result, in 2003 the United Nations Security Council issued Regulation 1478, which prohibited UN Member States from importing logs from Liberia. After a peace agreement was signed in 2003, Liberia sought to restore the rule of law to the forestry sector. The Liberia Forest Initiative was convened to help the Liberian Government establish sustainable use of forest resources and to promote transparency in the forestry sector. In 2006, the Liberian Government adopted the National Forestry Reform Law and a series of implementing regulations. In order to promote transparency and accountability in the forestry sector, the law requires companies that engage in logging to publish their payments to the government and requires the Forestry Development Authority to regularly audit and monitor the forestry contracts, produce an annual enforcement report, and enforce a chain-of custody system for all timber products. In 2007, Liberia joined the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. Although the Initiative usually focuses on the oil, gas, and mining sectors, Liberia decided to become the first country to incorporate its forestry sector into this process (as well as its rubber sector). Initiative-compliant countries must demonstrate satisfactory levels of information disclosure and provide evidence that there is a functional process to improve transparency, even if the country does not have a fully transparent sector. Liberia has been compliant since 2009.