Konjiehi, (U/W), June 11, GNA – The European Union Resilience Against Climate Change (EU REACH) project is targeting to plant a total of 18,000 different tree species in 18 communities across six Municipalities and Districts in the Upper West Region.
This is to complement the Green Ghana project being championed by the Government of Ghana as part of measures to help mitigate the effects of climate change.
At the Konjiehi Basic School in Wa Municipality to kick start the weeklong tree planting exercise, Mr Anselm Kofi Taabazuing, the Finance and Administrative Manager of the EU REACH and the Market Oriented Agriculture Programme (MOAP), said the exercise would help recover the depleted forest cover in the region.
He said they were planting the trees together with students to educate them on the benefits of tree planting and the need for them to cultivate the habit.
He said the community tree planting exercise, which would continue from June 14 to June 25, 2021, would benefit selected communities in Wa and Nandom Municipalities as well as Lambussie, Daffiama-Bussie-Issa, Wa East and Sissala West Districts.
Mr Taabazuing explained that the initiative was to help promote climate change mitigation approaches and to sensitize communities to adopt tree planting to protect their immediate environments.
“The exercise is to give three fruit trees and two shade trees to each household. This is to create household ownership of the trees, which will enhance proper nurturing to ensure the trees do not die but live to provide food and shade to the people while also restoring the climate”, he said.
“This is the third of the community tree planting exercise and we have sensitized the community people adequately to ensure that the trees planted would be properly nurtured to ensure they all survived,” he added.
He said the nature of the climate today was not the same 20 years ago because of negative human activities, adding that this had affected food production, hence the need to embrace the Green Ghana agenda by planting more trees to restore the climate.
Mr Emmanuel Sasu Yeboah, the Upper West Regional Director of Agriculture, noted that the depletion of the forests over the past years had been too much due to illegal mining, illegal logging and charcoal burning activities, thereby causing climate change.
He said it was important to work hard to reverse the situation through the Green Ghana project, which aimed at planting a total of five million trees in a day and lauded the EU REACH project for complementing the government’s effort.
“I tell you, if we continue doing this year after year, there is going to be a massive change in the climate again,” Mr Yeboah said.
He encouraged REACH Project staff to continue to monitor all the communities to ensure that they take good care of their trees for them to grow.
The Regional Director of Agriculture mooted the idea of instituting an award scheme to reward communities that have the highest survival rate as a way of encouraging them to take care of the trees.
He explained that when communities understand the benefit of trees and even know that there will be a reward for them, they will be motivated to ensure all the trees planted in their communities survived.
“When they eventually come to realise the importance of trees to their existence, they will go into voluntary planting of trees,” he said.
On charcoal burning, Mr Yeboah encouraged people to establish agro- forestry lots, which they can use for charcoal.
GNA