Tamale, July 26, GNA – A seminar to prepare future generations of scientists and development practitioners with new concepts and approaches to solve the problem of land degradation in the country is underway in Tamale.
It is also to practically build and strengthen the capacity of the youth and middle level manpower on land degradation neutrality, nature-based solutions, and value chain development approaches to help in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The three-day seminar, is organised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the University for Development Studies’ West African Centre for Water, Irrigation and Sustainable Agriculture (UDS – WACWISA). Participants included researchers/experts and graduate students.
It is on the theme: “Connecting Land Degradation Neutrality, Nature-based Solutions, Landscape and Value Chain Development Approaches”, and forms part of the “Creating Lands of Opportunity: Transforming Livelihoods through Landscape Restoration in the Sahel (LOGMe)” project.
The LOGMe project, being implemented in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Niger by IUCN with support from the Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition through the Global Mechanism of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, is aimed at promoting and strengthening the enabling environment for leveraging land-based investments benefiting local communities across the Sahel.
Professor Gordana Kranjac-Berisavljevic, Deputy Director of UDS – WACWISA, who represented Pro-Vice-Chancellor of UDS during the opening of the seminar in Tamale, said UDS was committed to protecting the environment, hence rolling out programmes to train students and practitioners on such issues.
Land degradation is a global concern for sustainable development, conservation of biodiversity and mitigating and adapting to climate change.
Its impacts can be far-reaching including loss of soil fertility, destruction of species’ habitat and biodiversity, soil erosion, and excessive nutrient runoff into lakes.
Ghana has 35 per cent of her land under threat of desertification, and as result of land degradation, grasslands, woodlands and forests are being lost while natural water bodies are drying up due to prolonged droughts and sedimentation of water courses.
Professor Samuel Cobbina, Dean of Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, UDS said the seminar provided an opportunity for researchers, experts and graduate students to study and discuss the land degradation neutrality, nature-based solutions and value chain development approaches into the students’ research themes aimed at finding practical solutions to land degradation in the country.
Professor Cobbina said it also augmented the Faculty’s teaching and research with graduate programmes in Environmental Management and Sustainability, Agroforestry, Biodiversity Conservation and with new upcoming programmes on Environmental Science with Eco-technology and Ecological Restoration Sciences.
Dr Jacques Somda, Country Director of IUCN in Burkina Faso underscored the importance of the roles of research institutions to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, especially the target on land degradation neutrality hence the organisation of the seminar at UDS with the involvement of WACWISA.
Dr Somda emphasised the need for African countries to align their environmental policies with regional and sub-regional policies to better address issues of climate change instead of implementing individual country policies that had varied objectives.
He was hopeful that at the end of the seminar “All participants get good understanding of these themes, students, the future generation of scientists identify new areas of interest for their research, academia and researchers proactively contribute to achieving Ghana’s commitment on land degradation neutrality, nature-based solutions and sustainable development of agrosylvopastoral value chains.”
GNA