Accra, Oct. 23, GNA – The Regreening Africa project, an evidence-based approach to accelerating land restoration, has seen over 200,000 hectares of degraded land under various forms of restoration in Northern Ghana, Mr. Edward Akunyara, World Vision Ghana Project Manager, has disclosed.
He said this at a two-day project overview workshop that brought together government agencies, civil society organisations, donors, famers, and community leaders to review the success of the project.
The five and a half-year Green Africa project is a €1.3 million European Union (EU) funded project and was implemented by a consortium of World Vision Ghana, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), with technical support from World Agroforestry.
Speaking on the sidelines of the workshop, Mr. Akunyara said the goal of the project was to improve livelihoods, food security and restore the ecosystem.
He said the catchment area of this project, including Garu Tempane, Bawku West and Mion, had seen over 200,000 seedlings planted over the past five years and 11,920 farmers and fire stewards trained in bush fire management.
“At the moment, over 200,000 hectares of land are under various forms of restoration using locally appropriate techniques such as tree planting, nursery establishment, Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) and other forms of agroforestry and sustainable land management interventions.
“There have been so many gains we have achieved over the past five years as we have been able to establish functional environmental governance systems and structures at the community and district level.
“But as part of an effort to see the sustainability of this project in Northern Ghana, we have been in discussion with the community leaders and stakeholders to lead the advocacy for the need to preserve our lands,” he said.
Mr. Nyadia Sulemana Nelson, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer at the Forestry Commission, during the workshop said it was important as stakeholders shared insights on the restoration pathways of the rapidly degrading Northern Savannah landscape.
“This dialogue is important to the ongoing efforts to sustain the achievement of the Green Africa project by the various actors in Ghana. It would help foster collaborations to bring best practices in restoring our lands, “he said.
Mr. Sulemana Nelson said activities such as poor farming practices, wild fires, unplanned urbanisation models, and illegal surface mining had contributed to landscape degradation, which, according to him, affected achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals 2, 13, and 15, which highlight zero hunger, climate action, and life on land respectively.
He rallied his support for calls to accelerate the scale of land restoration due to the deteriorating state of vegetation cover and the vanishing of wildlife in several communities in Northern Ghana.
Mr. Sulemana Nelson said the Forestry Commission was a key player in restoring our lands and had various programmes, including the African Forest Landscape Restoration initiative, which aims to restore two million hectares of land by 2030, as well as the government’s Green Ghana initiative.
Mr. Clemens Beckers, a member of the EU Delegation in Ghana, Climate Change and Environment, said the EU was pleased to be the main funding partner for the project as it sought to halt issues of land degradation in eight African countries, which included Ghana.
“In Ghana, we are all aware of the challenges of climate change and the huge cost associated with the degraded lands in the country, especially in Northern Ghana. For this reason, this programme focused on Northern Ghana, with over 40,000 households benefiting from this project, “he said.
Mr. Beckens added that helping farmers in Ghana was a priority for the EU, which had invested in the agriculture sector, having embarked on several agriculture programmes including the Regreening Africa project.
GNA