Ghana benefits

GHANA has started benefiting from a programme to enable it to manage the forest resources of the country in a sustainable manner.
The programme, dubbed, “Moving forward in the implementation of the Non-Legally Binding Instrument (NLBI) in Ghana”, seeks to strengthen the commitment of the government and other key stakeholders in the forestry sector to effectively and sustainably manage all types of forests in the country and achieve common global objectives.
The NLBI is the result of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) and is a voluntary adherence to global core principles to put a stop to emerging challenges from depleted and degraded forests, such as climate change conditions and loss of livelihoods.
The NLBI will run for two years, with the Forestry Commission (FC) as the implementing agency and funding from the World Bank.
Funding will be made available through agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the GTZ and the International Union for the Conservation of Forests (IUCN), which will also provide technical support, while the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources will back the effort with critical policy initiatives.
It will run concurrently with the Growing Forest Partnerships (GFPs), which is an initiative of the FAO, the IUCN, the World Bank and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and provides the mechanism for bringing together local and international partnerships and investments to support the forestry sector, sustain livelihoods and preserve ecosystems.
The Technical Director of Forests of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Fredua Agyeman, explaining why Ghana was the first country to benefit from the support of international organisations in the implementation of the NLBI, said the country depended heavily on its forest for livelihood and energy, with about 14 million cubic metres of wood being used as domestic fuel energy yearly.
In six of the country’s 10 regions, the livelihoods of a majority of people also depended on the timber industry.
The challenge, then, he added, was for the country to maintain its forests and sustainably ensure that it stayed above the difficulties of the current climatic and global economic changes.
The Executive Director of the FC, Prof Nii Ashie Kotey, said in preparation for the programme, a steering committee with representation from a cross-section of society had already been set up to oversee the process, adding that a work plan had been approved to feed into the designing of a process to identify gaps in policies for redress.
He was confident that the country was going to utilise resources efficiently to achieve goals under the programme.
The Chief, Forestry Policy Services of the FAO, Ms Eva MÜller, said the programme Ghana experienced in the implementation of the programme might be the model upon which other countries could base their programmes.
She said the preliminary steps of the programme would focus on creating awareness and identifying issues that needed strengthening.
An official of the IUCN, Mr Chris Buss, said the two programmes were in no way going to re-invent the wheel but were geared towards improving existing measures and building the capacity of all.
Mr Kyeretwie Opoku of Civic Response, an NGO that also hosts the secretariat of the Forestry Watch, said a basic representation that would be made was for communities to be able to have access to the forests, share in the benefits and participate in all initiatives.