TURIDEP takes steps to check environmental degradation

Funsi (UW), April 26, GNA - The Tumu Deanery Rural Integrated Development Programme (TURIDEP), a Catholic organization has initiated steps to protect lands in the Sissala areas of the Upper West Region from indiscriminate exploitation.

As part of the programme, the organization brought together major players in the environment sector in the region to brainstorm and find ways of protecting lands that were under serious threat.

Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Minister of Food and Agriculture, Ghana National Fire Service, Wildlife Division and the Forestry Services Division attended the meeting at Funsi in the Wa East district on Friday.

Mr James Duma, Manager of TURIDEP said the aim of his organization was to help the people to plan and design development programmes along the lines of their problems and peculiar features.

He observed that the Sissala communities still had good vegetation cover with vast moderately fertile land for farming, good land for livestock production, numerous water bodies, clay and mineral rocks and good habitat for game and wildlife.

These communities have attracted and were still attracting people to the area to look for their livelihood and sustenance such as settler farmers and Fulani herdsmen and chain saw operators who have started plundering, damaging and degrading the environment with impunity. "Our rich game and wildlife is extinct, one can hardly see even a rabbit. Rivers have dried up, vast grassland is almost gone and we are now farming on marginal lands. The future looks bleak if nothing is done", he stated.

Mr Asher Nkegbe, Upper West Regional Director of the EPA, said once poverty has been identified as a major problem leading to environmental degradation, efforts would be geared towards providing alternative livelihood support programmes for the people. With Funds from the UNDP, he said the EPA has started guinea fowl projects in the Lawra and Lambussie districts of the region. The need to empower chiefs to arrest and sanction people caught in activities that pollute or degrade the environment was emphasized by all the participants.

Naa Abu Salia Bafaradu, a retired Educationist who is also a Traditional ruler observed that before Ghana attained political independence, chiefs had power and could punish anybody caught in any act that could damage the environment and destroy people's livelihood. Since that was no longer the case, he said directives by chiefs with regard to the environment were being ignored and the destruction continued with impunity.