By: Oforiwa Darko
Ghana will soon receive fifty Million US Dollars for reducing carbon dioxide emission, under its premier Reductions Program, the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program which began in 2019. The result-based payment is for some ten million tons of carbon dioxide emissions expected to be reduced by 2024.
The program which was accepted into the Carbon Fund of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility seeks to reduce carbon emissions by promoting climate-smart cocoa production systems and cross-cutting actions, using best socio-cultural and environmental practices. Located in the south of the country, the carbon partnership mission reductions program area, covers almost 6 million hectares of the West Africa Guinean Forest biodiversity hotspot.
Addressing Ghana’s Forest Solutions to Climate Change session, organized by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources at the ongoing twenty-seventh session of Conference of Parties (COP27) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the Climate Funds Manager at the World Bank, Erwin De Nys said that the country will soon receive 4.8 million US dollars, which is over nine hundred and seventy thousand tonnes of verified and validated emission reductions between June and December, 2019.
According to Erwin De Nys, to deepen Ghana’s interest in the Emission Reduction Program and further reduce emissions and ensure social inclusion, Ghana will benefit from the Enabling Access to Benefits while Lowering Emissions (EnABLE) Programme of the World Bank.
The Director of Tropenbos Ghana, Mercy Owusu Ansah, noted that a benefit-sharing mechanism has been developed through a comprehensive process for an inclusive and transparent benefit sharing and fund flow mechanism, with communities receiving two-thirds of the benefit.
“An independent 7-member REDD+ Dedicated Account Committee has been created to ensure transparency, accountability, effectiveness, efficiency, and equitable distribution of emission reduction payment to beneficiaries. The committee is also mandated to eliminate any conflict of interest”.
On the issue of Climate Financing, the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, said that Ghana has already missed one billion dollars climate finance pledge made in Copenhagen, thirteen years ago, therefore there is the need to collaboratively bridge the financing gap between ambition and finance.
“All of us, actors in the global polity, do have a responsibility to act with a sense of urgency. I can marshal out my being that the time for action and implementation is now”.
The Ministry of Finance will soon open a REDD+ Dedicated Account which will ensure the distribution of funds to beneficiaries according to the benefit-sharing arrangement of 69% to Communities and 31% to the Government. The landscape governance structure will manage the Fund flow at the community level.
