Ghana marks World Day to Combat Drought and Desertification

Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, Minister of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation, has called on Ghanaians to help maintain the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services and contribute to reducing the COVID-19 crisis’ impact on global poverty and food insecurity.

He said everyone could also protect the land we live on by making simple changes in their lives to support community resilience.

"The food we eat and the clothes we wear have an impact on land thousands of miles away", the Minister has said.

This was contained in a message to mark World Day to Combat Drought and Desertification (WDCDD).

"We must create a new social contract with nature.

"If we choose to work in harmony with nature, we will avoid waste and reduce land degradation, reduce carbon emissions, and reverse biodiversity loss. The time to act is now", the Minister said.

The WDCDD is observed every year, per the UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/49/115 to promote public awareness about the causes and effects of land degradation, desertification, and drought as well as highlight efforts to combat these challenges.

This year’s theme “Food. Feed. Fibre”, seeks to educate individuals on the links between consumption and land.

The celebration is focusing on changing public attitudes to the leading driver of desertification and land degradation: our relentless production and consumption patterns.

Professor Frimpong-Boateng said the lives of close to half the people on the planet were affected by land degradation.

As the global population continues to grow wealthier and more urban, so does the demand on land to provide food, animal feed, and fibre for clothing, he said.

Meanwhile, the health and productivity of existing arable land kept declining, worsened by climate change.

He said to have enough productive land to meet the demands of ten billion people by 2050, the lifestyles of all of the persons needed to change.

According to the Minister, Ghana has 35 per cent of its land under threat of desertification due to anthropogenic activities such as deforestation, unsustainable land-use practices, wildfires, the use of agrochemicals, and overgrazing.

However, there was clear evidence of recovery and restoration of degraded landscapes through the implementation of the Ghana Environmental Management Project (GEMP), the Sustainable Land and Water Management Project (SLWMP) and the Adaptation Fund Project.

These projects have provided dugouts as watering points for livestock and supported 39,000 farmers with farm inputs to practice various forms of Sustainable Land Management technologies within 246 communities, covering 152, 578 hectares of land, to protect the ecology of the northern sectors of Ghana.

Also, a total of 1,060 hectares of land had been reforested within two forest reserves namely the Kulpawn and the Ambalara Forest Reserves.

Again, the Adaptation Fund Project had provided water and increased access to water supply by drilling 145 boreholes and constructing 10 dug-outs to serve over 1,000,000 people mainly women and children in 50 communities in 10 districts in the northern sector of Ghana.

The Project had also undertaken several livelihood interventions in the area of beekeeping, shea butter processing, groundnut oil extraction, dry season vegetable production, and fish farming.

The implementation of these projects were in line with the government’s priority programmes and were complementing and enhancing the successful execution of the “One Village One Dam”, “Planting for Food and Jobs” and the government Medium Term Development Plan “Agenda for Jobs”.