By Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo
The Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission, in collaboration with the Ghana Shea Landscape Emission Reductions Project (GSLERP), will support eight Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) with appropriate technology to restore and manage over 71,000 hectares of land for the benefit of host communities.
Under the initiative, the Wildlife Division and GSLERP are committed to the development of green business value chains, especially Shea which is regarded as the cocoa of the North.
The Director of Stakeholder and Ecotourism, Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission, Dr Richard Gyimah, made the announcement at the inauguration of an environmental governance structure known as the CREMA Executive Committee (CEC) at Tumu in the Upper West Region.
Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo reports that the 16-member committee, which has Bukari Kadri as its chairperson, was inaugurated by the Magistrate of the Tumu District Court, Frederick Kaar Tieme.
The Ghana Shea Landscape Emission Reductions Project (GSLERP), which was launched in February 2022 in Tamale by Vice President Bawumia, is providing funding to the CREMAs for the collaborative initiative.
According to Dr. Richard Gyimah, farmers will be supported in planting millions of hybrid Shea seedlings to ensure the early maturity of the trees and boost the raw materials for shea butter production.
He said there are over 60 CREMAs at various stages of development across the country, of which 33 have been given certificates of devolution by government through the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, and touched on further commitment to environmental governance.
“The government of Ghana had further demonstrated its commitment to community-led environmental governance with the passage of the Wildlife Resources Management Bill, which strengthens the legal authority and scope of CREMAs to administer, manage and share the benefits of managing natural resources, including flora and fauna,at the local level,” Dr Gyimah stated.
The Project Manager of GSLERP, Emmanuel Baapeng, indicated that the project [GSLERP] seeks to restore 200,000 hectares of off-reserve through self-financing community management in CREMAs, restore 100,000 hectares of Shea Parklands, and also restore 25,500 hectares of degraded forest reserves within the Northern Savannah Zone (NSZ).
Mr. Baapeng added that so far, the project has planted about four million seedlings across the Northern Savannah Zone in severely degraded forest reserves and Shea parklands, established 47 community nurseries, and trained over 3,000 women in sustainable parkland management, cooperative development, shea aggregation marketing, and improved business management.
The Regional Manager for the Northern Zone, Joseph Kwasi Binlinla, observed that the CREMA concept is a tool to empower communities in sustainable resource management and praised the Sissila East Municipality for hosting three of the eight CREMAs in the Upper West Region.
The MCE for Sissala East, Fuseini Yakubu Batong, expressed displeasure about the felling of shea trees for charcoal production and stressed that the practice be stopped to conserve the environment.
The Chairman of the CEC, Bukari Kadri, promised that members of the Committee would channel their youthful energies to execute the tasks assigned to them by their chiefs and community members.
The Chief of Kong and Vice President of the Tumu Traditional Council, Kuoro Mahamudu Zakaria Savei, who presided at the function, called for further education on the implementation of the Modified Taungya System (MTS) for the people to have a better understanding of the concept and added that priority should be given to land owners in connection with the MTS.
In a related development, a 13-member CREMA Committee was inaugurated at Kandie in the Sissila West District with Adamu Forkah as its Chairman.
The Chief of Kandie, Kuoru Bamula Basinjia Chieminah, pledged the support of the traditional authority to the committee and entreated GSLERP and the Forestry Commission to timely provide the needed technical and logistical assistance to the committee for it to achieve its objectives.
