By Christiana Afua Nyarko, GNA
Accra, June 29, GNA – The Rainforest Alliance, a pro environmental organization, is pushing for more attention on regenerative agriculture and large scale land restoration.
The organization is committed to the creation of a more sustainable world by employing social and market forces to protect nature, improve lives of farmers and forest communities.
A press release issued by the Ghana office and signed by David Babayara, the Ghanaian representative, said the idea aimed at addressing climate change, deforestation, and rural poverty.
The practice, according to The Rainforest Alliance, involved practical, community-led solutions across 62 countries with nearly eight million farmers and workers supported and over 6 million hectares of certified farmland under sustainable management.
“The Rainforest Alliance is ushering in a new model of agriculture; one that prioritises giving back more to the planet than it takes. Tropical forests are still falling at a rate of ten football fields per minute. Now is the time to transition to a new model of agriculture; one where every cup of coffee and every bar of chocolate gives back more than it takes from the land and the people who care for it,” the statement said.
According to the statement, “this is echoed in the voice of Santiago Gowland, the global CEO of the Rainforest Alliance.”
The organisation said iit had an ongoing regenerative agriculture and landscape partnership particularly in the West and Central part of Africa.
The key sectors outlined in their 2024 report included the cocoa sector in which over 3 million farmers on 4.6 million hectares would be impacted.
The coffee sector would have about 1.8 million farmers on 1.9 million hectares impacted whilst 2.4 million farmers on 1.4 million hectares from the tea sector would be beneficiaries of this initiative.
Om the other hand, the banana sector would have over 158,000 farmers on more than 213,000 hectares benefit.
Moreover, in West and Central Africa, landscape programmes initiated by The Forest Alliance have helped rural communities in countries such as Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, partnering with businesses and local NGOs to tackle interconnected challenges.
In 2024 alone, over 404,000 people benefited from community-led programmes and 14.9 million hectares were covered under regenerative landscape initiatives.
“Farmers across West and Central Africa are not just adapting, they are leading with
real investment and partnership, they are proving that agriculture can restore ecosystems while supporting livelihoods,” said Nadège Nzoyem, Regional Director for The Rainforest Alliance in
West and Central Africa.
Other key areas highlighted by the 2024 report were the Global Reach in which products with the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal now appear in, 155 countries enabling the daily production of an estimated 333 million cups of coffee and 96 million bars of chocolate,
Landscape Transformation in which the Alliance runs 83 active programmes across more than 25 million hectares, benefiting 1.3 million people and generating $34 million among many other interventions.
the Rainforest Alliance said it was building a movement centred on regeneration, equity, and action—with farmers at the heart of it programmes worldwide
GNA
29 June 2025
Edited by Samuel Osei Frempong