Mr Baapeng Emmanuel, the Manager of the Shea Landscape Emission Reduction project (GSLERP), has indicated that the five Northern regions would benefit from Shea Parklands to restore the area from tree depletion.
He said the project would also restore about 200,000 hectares in off-reserves through self-financing management of the Community Resource Management Area (CREMAs) and would ensure additional 100,000 hectares of shea parklands and restore degraded forest with 25,500 of the Northern Savannah zones.
Mr Baapeng said this during the inauguration of the CREMA governance and Management Structure of the Executive Committee (CEC) for the GSLERP at Tumu.
He spoke on the theme: ‘Mitigating Climate Change in the Savannah Landscape, the GSLERP approach.’
He said that GSLERP was being implemented in four approaches, which included restoring off-reserve techniques, replanting degraded shea parklands, and the use of the modified taungya system plantation.
The implementation of an integrated monitoring system wo
uld also ensure that communities and individuals benefitted from entering the carbon market and get carbon absorbed by the trees within their ecological zone, he said.
He advised the public to pursue biodiversity conservation, avoid bushfires, and plant more trees to help minimise emitting greenhouse gases that lead to global warming and climate change.
Giving the purpose of the function, Mr Joseph Binlinla, the Upper West Regional Manager of the Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission, said the CREMA concept was one of the best ways of preserving the environment and called on the communities involved to take an active interest in it.
He encouraged them to use the project to develop their CREMAs to be viable since the area was rich in natural resources.
Dr Richard Gyimah, a Director at the Forestry Commission, said the mechanism for implementing collaborative wildlife management outside protected areas was the management advisory board, which dealt with decentralised community-based natural resources
that enabled local but prudent management of the resources.
Dr Gyimah noted that the government demonstrated its commitment to community-led environmental governance with the passage of the Wildlife Resource Management Bill, which strengthens the legal authority of CREMAs to administer and share the benefits of natural resources.
He revealed that 59 CREMAs at different stages of development across the country were developed, with 33 given devolution certificates from the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.
He pledged that under GESLERP, the Department of Stakeholders and Eco-tourism would support appropriate technology in eight constituent CREMAs with a landscape of 71,034.81 hectares.
Kuoro Mahamoud Savei, who chaired the function, asked the communities to embrace the projects to develop their towns and preserve the shea tree and called for increased education on the tungya system.
Mr Fuseini Batong Yakubu, the Sissala East Municipal Chief Executive, emphasised the important role the shea tree play
ed in the lives of the people in the northern part of Ghana.
He admonished the newly sworn-in committees not to see themselves above already established structures in the communities to ensure harmony.
A sixteen-member Executive Committee of the Community Resource Management Committees Areas (CREMA) in the Sisssla East was sworn into office.
The GSLERP is a collaborative project targeted at restoration with partnership from the UNDP, Forestry Commission, and Global Shea Alliance.
Source: Ghana News Agency
