Benito Owusu-Bio, Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources
Benito Owusu-Bio, Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources in charge of Lands and Forestry, has stressed the need for collaborative and urgent efforts to salvage the environment from further destruction.
“We are in trying times; our environment, forests, and water systems are in need of our urgent help. We have only one Ghana; therefore, the responsibility lies on all of us to make a difference,” Mr Owusu-Bio stated yesterday during his opening statement at the Ghana Forest Investment Programme (GFIP) Stakeholder Validation Workshop held in Accra.
He said the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources considers partnership, collaboration, mutual respect and collective effort as the main strategy to overcome the current situation the country is confronted with.
Acknowledging that the emerging challenges affecting the environment cannot be overemphasized, he stated: “We can all attest to the changing patterns in our rainfall, temperatures and the resultant rampant floods in our various communities.”
Interventions
He said the Ghana Forest Investment Programme (GFIP), over the years, had been one of the opportunities available to the Ministry in addressing some of the underlying drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in the country.
The Minister added that GFIP had managed to achieve majority of the key targets in a transparent and inclusive manner which had brought major funding partners, Climate Investment Fund and the World Bank to provide an additional funding to tackle other emerging issues on the landscape.
“The World Bank has fully bought into the Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) concept, and are exploring the opportunity of adopting it in future projects, in-country and outside of Ghana,” he disclosed.
The Deputy Minister observed that managing artisanal small-scale mining had become a challenge in recent years with unimaginable visible destruction to forests and water bodies.
He added that the government had, however, “risen to calls to halt this destruction, which poses an existential threat to all Ghanaians”.
Strategic plan
He disclosed that the strategic plan being discussed at the forum include a study on institutional and legislative framework for mining rehabilitation in the artisanal small-scale mining value chain.
He further stated that even though the initiative under the GFIP is a pilot one, and had reflected in the Strategic Plan, its intention is to rehabilitate a total of 150 hectares spread across Afao Hills Forest Reserve in Bibiani Forest District, Supoma and Denyua Forest Reserves in the Bekwai Forest District.
Mr Owusu-Bio said to monitor and supervise the rehabilitation work to ensure sustainability and ownership, the Project had instituted district implementation teams to ensure that the planned value for the initiative is achieved.
He assured the stakeholders that he would personally come on board when implementation of the programme begins as he believes in collaborative work.
About The Author
