Story: Mary Ankrah and Irene Bamfoah Boateng
The President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, has said Ghana is responding to environmental threats including deforestation and forest degradation as it adopts best practices in order to derive the maximum benefit from forestry and forest carbonate.
The best practices, he said, included the development of new legislative and regulatory frameworks, forest law enforcement governance and trade, as well as promoting collaborative resources management through institutional capacity building at all levels.
Mr Mahama made this known yesterday in Accra at the opening ceremony of an international conference on investment in forestry and forest carbon yesterday in Accra.
The three-day conference which is on the theme: “Boosting Investment in Sustainable Forestry, Forest Carbon and Renewable Energy”, is to attract foreign investment opportunity in sustainable forestry; contribute to sustainable development in Africa and climate change mitigation, and facilitate dialogue between stakeholders for mutual business interest.
It also seeks to explore opportunities and challenges in investing in forestry and forest carbon on the continent.
In a speech read on the President’s behalf by the Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Ms Sherry Ayittey, the President said the forestry sector offered enormous opportunities for public and private sector investment and so the government had put in place various strategies to improve the investment climate and economic environment to support key business initiative.
Those investment opportunities, according to him, existed in forest plantation development in degraded forest reserves and off reserves, particularly in the transitional zone and savannah areas.
Again, Mr Mahama observed that the government had established seed banks to support the plantation development programme; invested in eco-tourism in protected areas including the national parks, resource reserves, strict nature reserve and wildlife sanctuaries.
He added that a value-added wood products processing in the areas of briquettes, blackboards, particle boards and lesser-used wood species (LUS) had been initiated and investment had been made in the use of bamboo and rattan as alternative to timber.
He indicated, however, that one of the key areas that were yet to be explored was the payment for environmental services and potential for assessing carbon credits from green funds and clean development mechanisms.
“Sustainable financing especially for forest plantation development programmes continue to be a major challenge for Ghana and developing countries”, he observed.
To that end, he said the government was exploring possible opportunities to fund the carbonate market and so far, Ghana had attracted some funding from the forest carbon partnership facility (FCF) while another funding had been assured under the forest investment programme of the World Bank.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Mike Hammah, observed that the forestry sector in Africa contributed sustainably to rural livelihoods and poverty alleviation because a large number of the rural poor derived part of their livelihood inputs from forest resources.
In keeping with the objectives of the national development agenda towards poverty reduction, he said there was the need to explore emerging opportunities for sustainable forest financing through carbon credit.
“The thrust of the new policy is to strengthen decentralisation of forest and wildlife governance, promote climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as payment for ecosystem services”, he said.
Besides, he observed that the policy was intended to address drivers of deforestation and forest degradation and promote a paradigm shift from the consumption use of the forest to non-consumption use.
In that direction, he said, The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources would focus on the expansion of the forest resources base through the plantation development programme which was ongoing in the various community, using state resources, and the implementation of large-scale commercial plantation development throughout the country.
For her part, Dr Tineke E. Lambooy of Nyenrode Business University’s Centre for Sustainability in The Netherlands, presented a book titled ‘The Ecosystem Promise’ to the Government of Ghana to assist the government get an insight into the new trend of assigning financial value to nature and payment for the services that nature offers.
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