Prioritise Green Ghana project for sustainable agricultural productivity - Speakers at 73rd New Year School advise

Some speakers at the 73rd New Year School and Conference in Accra have called for the prioritisation of the Green Ghana project and other initiatives to restore the country’s degraded landscape.

They observed that proactive measures were required to preserve the environment because there was a nexus between a green, resilient environment and sustainable agriculture productivity.

The speakers — the Minister of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Dr Owusu Afriyie-Akoto; an agronomist and politician, Dr Abu Sakara Foster, and the Director of Operations at the Forestry Commission, Mr Hugh Brown, addressed one of the plenary sessions at the New Year School at the University of Ghana.

Speaking on the topic "Greening Ghana for food and jobs during the pandemic and beyond", they said the Green Ghana project was crucial because it had the potential to address climate change and create more jobs along the agriculture value chain.

Green Ghana key

In his submission, Dr Afriyie-Akoto said since the implementation of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) policy in 2017, consistent effort had been made to use climate-smart and environmentally-friendly strategies to boost productivity in the agriculture sector.

For instance, he said, the 23 million seedlings that had so far been distributed to farmers as part of the PFJ were climate-resilient.

"We at the Ministry of Agriculture are excited about the launch of the Green Ghana project because it has the capacity to restore the environment, promote agricultural productivity and address climate change," he said.

He also observed that in the era of COVID-19, countries that failed to take steps to roll out climate-smart policies to preserve their environment would face food insecurity.

The minister added that the MoFA was working with other stakeholders to promote investment in climate data, risk insurance against climate change to build resilience in food production.

Curbing illegalities

In his submission, Mr Brown said all stakeholders must support ongoing efforts to tackle human activities such as illegal mining, logging and bush burning that destroy farmlands and forests.

In particular, he said gold mining had become the major cause of habitat fragmentation and destruction of forest reserves.

"The effect of this human activities is evident in forest depletion, soil erosion, increased greenhouse emissions, reduced production capacity of the forest and loss of biodiversity.

"There is, therefore, the need for urgent steps to prioritise landscape restoration and conservation efforts to help save the situation," the Forestry Commission’s Director of Operations emphasised.

Mr Brown said Ghana had committed to restore two million hectares of deforested and degraded landscape by 2030 under some international initiatives such as the New York Declaration on Forest, the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative and the Paris Climate Agreement.

Again, he said it was in line with restoring the forest cover that the government launched the Ghana Forest Plantation Strategy in 2016, with one of its cardinal objectives being to establish 25,000 hectares of forest plantation.

Alternative energy sources

For his part, Dr Sakara said committing resources to a green economy in Ghana was non-negotiable.

He stressed the importance to explore sustainable sources of energy to boost agro-processing and create jobs along the agriculture value chain.

Dr Sakara, who was also the presidential candidate of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) in the 2012 elections, said the cost of energy was high and had to be relooked to ensure that an enabling environment was created for more jobs.