GHANA'S FORESTS DEPLETING FAST (p.41) 15-08-08

Story: Kofi Yeboah & Gifty Appiah

GHANA has been experiencing an alarming rate of forest degradation with the loss of 1.9 per cent of forest cover per annum from 2000 to 2005 and rising thereafter, posing serious climatic problems to the nation.
In some communities, the rate of degradation is as high as 7.8 per cent per annum.
This is mainly the result of factors such as felling trees for charcoal and fuel wood, agriculture activities and encroachment on forest reserves.
An official of the Forestry Commission, Mr Robert Bamfo, who made this known in Accra yesterday, called for pragmatic measures to address the trend of forest degradation, whose economic consequences are very dire.
He was speaking at the opening of a two-day workshop on “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
The workshop is aimed at creating awareness among partners on issues regarding the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
It is also to discuss the involvement of the various partners in the designing of REDD Readiness Plan for the country, which would lead to the formulation of a National REDD Strategy for Ghana.
The workshop comes one week ahead of two international conferences on climate change scheduled to take place in Accra. These are the United Nations Climate Change Talks on the Third Session of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long Term Co-operative Action (AWG-LCA 3) under the Climate Convention, and the first part of the Sixth Session of the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitment for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP 6).
According to the United Nations (UN), greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries as a result of deforestation contribute about 20 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
The REDD initiative is a top international agenda proposed by Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea to combat greenhouse emissions, and was later embraced by other countries, including Ghana.
At the moment, the initiative is receiving financial and legislate support from the World Bank, the G8, the scientific community and the international political community.
Mr Bamfo gave a number of statistics to buttress his assertion that the rate of deforestation and forest degradation in Ghana was very alarming.
An official of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Mr Antwi-Bosiako Amoah, said a national assessment carried out by the EPA on greenhouse emission in 2000 indicated that climatic change was having serious consequences on the country’s water systems and coastal zones.
He said the climatic change was also having serious effect on the economy, including health, as a result of increased cases of malaria, cerebro spinal meningitis, guinea worm and diarrhoea; agriculture as a result of low productivity; land management due to reduction in soil fertility and increase in desertification; loss of biodiversity; and coastal zone as a result of a rise in the sea level.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Forestry Commission, Prof Nii Ashie Kotey, stressed the need for co-ordination among national agencies whose activities related to REDD to ensure effective and lasting solution to the problem.
He further stressed the need to build national capacity to monitor forest cover changes and associated changes in carbon stocks in order to ensure that REDD worked effectively.
Prof Kotey said the Forestry Commission had initiated measures to address the causes of deforestation and degradation, expressing the hope that the intervention would be given a boost next month when Ghana and the European Union (EU) signed the Voluntary Partnership Agreement.
Under the agreement, forest law reinforcement, governance and trade systems of credible legal and administrative structures will be put in place to ensure that timber is produced in accordance with existing forestry laws and policies to eliminate or minimise illegally produced timber on the EU markets.