A Lecturer with the faculty of Environment and Conservation at University College of Agriculture and Environment Akyem Bunso Dr.Kwaku Adu has suggested to government to adopt individual or community ownership strategies to sustain the Green Ghana Project .
President Akufo-Addo has declared June 10, 2022, as this year’s Green Ghana Day, under the theme “Mobilising for a Greener Future.”
The President made the declaration at the Accra International Conference Centre on March 1, 2022, when he launched the 2022 edition of Green Ghana Day.
The Green Ghana Day was instituted last year by Government, under the auspices of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, to create a collective action towards restoration of degraded landscapes in the country, mitigate climate change and inculcate in the youth the values of planting and nurturing trees and their associated benefits, he continued.
20 million trees are expected to be planted this year as against Seven million trees planted during the maiden edition last year.
Dr.Kwaku Adu believes communities and individuals must be entrusted with ownership responsibilities to nature, protect and conserve the trees.
“I will advise that we use approach call community ownership approach or individual ownership approach .What I mean is a community can be entrusted with about 100 or 50 trees.You have to take charge of that ,you have to ensure that they grow .You nature it ,water it ,weed around it make sure it grows.Moreover we can adapt individual tree ownership approach where each member of the community can be given a tree or two to take charge.So I think with that we can be able to sustain it ,” Dr Adu said .
He said the University college with core mandate to ensuring environmental sustainability has nursed many tree species to be planted this year in support of the initiative .
“When it was launched the first , school we engaged our students .We planted a whole lot of trees.This year too ,thankfully we have started nursing trees to be planted”.
Asare Frimpong facility manager for Bunso Aboretum said different plant species have been made available for supply to the public for the green Ghana Project .
Meanwhile, the University College of Agriculture and Environmental studies(UCAES) has initiated a project to assess and evaluate ecological and economic value of Bunso aboretum eco-park ,and the nexus of benefits to the fringe communities.
Gyasi Damptey Frederick , Diaspora expert and an applied ecologist interested in ecosystem processes and patterns in altered landscapes explained that ” we decided to bring students for them to come and have the practical feel of the things we teach them in classroom.
So our main task here is that we are going to find out the diversity of tree species and then insects we have here and the with this information we can use them as proxies and quantify them into ecosystem services then we can boldly say that this forest is forest is providing this services and then we can put monitory value on it” he said .
According to him ” the idea is to try to value this forest, once we know what we have in this forest then we can prepare a management plan which will be used to protect this whole forest”.
He said the project would among other things help to identify medicinal plants in the Bunso aboretum eco-park.
“We are likely to find a lot of medicinal plants here, so once we have this data it will help people to access medicinal plants anytime there is the need for it.We want to also test the soil condition , to know the condition of the soil that is why it is supporting trees.
This is going to be roughly 8 weeks packed program whereby every week we will come here take sample to the lab and then analyse for our students to know what are over here”.
Climate change continues to derail the fundamentals required to achieve the sustainable development Goals .
Gyasi Damptey Frederick, underscored the need for Ghana to protect its forest cover for sustainable services to facilitate achieving the SDGs.
“The service these forest are providing in terms of climate regulation, water shelf protection and others means that the services are so dear for the nation , that is why we need to protect our forest”.
The participating students of UCAES stressed the need Conservation of the environment for sustainable ecological service for quality life and development.
Source : Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/Kojo Ansah