By Comfort Sena Fetrie-Akagbor
Tamale, Jan 30, GNA –The Ghana Shea Landscape Emission Reductions Project (GSLERP) says it has planted 1,268,725 seedlings on 1,427 hectares of degraded lands in the forest reserves in the country as part of the project.
Mr Emmanuel Boateng, Project Manager, said amongst the seedlings planted were teak, Kapok, Eucalyptus, Acacia, and Mahogany with the aim to reduce the negative impact of climate change in the Northern Savannah Zone.
Mr Boateng said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Tamale.
He said: “These tree species were inter-cropped with food crops such as sorghum, maize, millet, beans and groundnut.”
He reiterated the need to care for and restrain from consistent burning of the forests to help restore ecosystem services to improve adaptive capacity of communities and the resilience of forest species in the Northern Savanna Zone.
The project is being implemented by the Forestry Commission in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme.
It seeks to restore 200,000 hectares of off-reserve savannah forests and woodlands, and place them under self-financing under community management, in Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs).
It is also to restore 100,000 hectares of degraded shea parklands, create 25,000 hectares of Modified Taungya System Forest plantation in severely degraded forest reserves, and finally implement an integrated monitoring system and completion of the national REDD+ architecture for safeguards, forest monitoring and reporting systems.
GNA