Ghana on path towards low carbon emission resilient economy – CIF

In efforts at reducing the factors contributing to climate change, the Head of the Climate Investment Fund (CIF), Mafalda Duarte, has said Ghana is on the path towards a low carbon emission resilient economy.

In a press briefing as part of the 10th anniversary mission visit to Ghana by the CIF, Duarte said the country would succeed in this if it sustains efforts and scales up resource to this effect.

The CIF has so far invested a total of US$75.7 million in support of sustainable cocoa and agriculture practices, greater access to tree tenure, more robust institutional capacity and policy reforms, and private sector engagement in climate action.

Through the Dedicated Grant Mechanism (DGM) the CIF is helping empower indigenous people, local communities and forest-dependent communities to design and implement forestry policies in line with their own interests.

“There is a paradigm shift in the understanding from the Forestry Commission, COCOBOD and farmers that they need to move away from the concept of having the cocoa trees exposed to the sun vis-à-vis having this shade loving cocoa not exposed,” Duarte observed.

“Because when you have this system of shade cocoa, you are basically restoring forest cover,” she added.

Cocoa production is responsible for half of Ghana’s deforestation and, in recent times, as high as 2 percent per year, one of the world’s highest.



“So it is very clear that there is now this understanding that if the producers of cocoa move away from the previous practice to this new practice [system of shade cocoa]; they would have persevered better yields, soils, streams and bio-diversity.”

Forest Investment Programme (FIP) financing is supporting projects that unite public and private sectors with indigenous people and local communities in restoring degraded forest landscapes, improving forest management, and reducing pressure on forests.

Efforts include promoting sustainable cocoa and agriculture practices, securing tree tenure, and facilitating institutional capacity building and policy reforms.

The CIF mission was in Ghana to showcase the progress the country has made toward a low-carbon future with support from the CIF and its partners.

Now marking 10 years of climate action, CIF has unlocked more than US$ 75 million in forest investments to make Ghana greener, more resilient, and accelerate its low-carbon development path.

Another US$40 million from the SREP is helping to create an enabling environment for renewable energy scale-up, focusing on renewable energy mini-grids and stand-alone solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, solar PV-based net metering with storage, and utility-scale solar PV and wind power generation.