CHANGE ATTITUDE TOWARDS ENVIRONMENT — MRS AWUNI (PAGE 16, DEC 22)

The Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Mrs Lucy Awuni, has advocated a change of mindset towards the environment, particularly with regard to bush burning and use of forest resources.
She said with the desert rapidly approaching Ghana, there was the need for chiefs and traditional rulers in the region to play a leading role in the fight against rampant bush burning, which also threatens food production.
Mrs Awuni said this in Bolgatanga during a one-day workshop on the Ghana Environmental Management Project (GEMP) and the National Action Programme to combat desertification and drought.
She said gradually bushfire was eating away large tracts of land for food crops, and therefore encouraged organisations working on how to protect the environment to partner with chiefs in curbing the phenomenon.
This, she said, could be in the form of a reward system to award traditional areas that ensured that bush burning in their communities were discouraged.
GEMP is a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) funded project designed by the Government of Ghana to find lasting solution to desertification in the country.
The project seeks to achieve this goal by strengthening Ghanaian institutions in rural communities to enable them to reverse land degradation and desertification in the three regions of northern Ghana.
It would also promote the adoption of sustainable water and land management systems to improve food security and reduce poverty in the three regions
Mr Frank Alormene, a Principal Programme Officer at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said GEMP-related activities in the Upper East Region started in the 1990s when in 1994 the UN General Assembly declared June 17 as the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought.
According to him, the project was being implemented in 30 interested communities in all districts within the Upper East Region, with emphasis on communities severely hit by desertification.
“Let us not forget that effective management of bush fire equals reversing the land degradation problem. Reversing the land degradation problem equals improving food security, improving food security equals poverty reduction and improved standard of living”, he said.
Mr Isaac C. Acquah, another Principal Programme Officer of the EPA, said GEMP was to complement efforts made under the Savannah Resource Management Project (SRMP).
Mr Samuel Anku, Director of Inter-sectoral Network, EPA, said in Ghana, a recent study by the World Bank and DFID estimated that the cost of environmental degradation was about $ 475 million a year or 5.5 of GDP.
According to him, the insidious nature of the phenomenon was having a serious impact on human development and livelihoods of communities.
He said the involvement of the local people was, therefore, to ensure long-term sustainability of the land in which they lived or had an interest.