Government borrows US$7M to enhance natural Forrest

Ghana’s Parliament has approved by resolution, the Loan Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Ghana and the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank Group (acting as implementing entity of the Forest Investment Programme under the Strategic Climate Fund) for an amount of Seven Million United States Dollars (US$7.000,000.00) being additional financing for Enhancing Natural Forest and Agroforest Landscape Project (FlP-ENFAL).

The purpose of the Agreement is to obtain funds to support Government’s efforts to improve forest and tree management practices by cocoa farmers, ‘CREMA’ communities and forest reserve managers to reduce forest loss and degradation in selected landscapes; and to demonstrate rehabilitation of mined-out sites in selected landscapes in Ghana’s High Forest Zone (HFZ).

The project under the Additional Financing (AF) follows the structure of the Original Financing and is divided into the following four (4) components namely:

Policy Reforms and Institutional Strengthening (US$2. 00 Million), pilot investment for improved Forrest and landscape management with communities (US$15.39 million), innovation, capacity building, and Communications (US$1.00 million) and project management, monitoring and coordination (US$1.00 million).

Background

Ghana’s cocoa forest landscapes has one of the highest deforestation rates in Africa at 3.2% per annum.

Forest degradation and deforestation across this agro-forest region, which covers about 5.9 Mittion hectares of Ghana’s High Forest Zones (HFZa), is further accelerated by the recent upsurge in iliegal mining and logging as well as continued cocoa expansion and other types of agriculture.

These drivers of deforestation have continually degraded Ghana’s rural tandscape.

In the past decades, conversion of forest reserves to mining sites and cocoa farms was not viewed as a probtem until the mid-nineties when it became clear that Ghana’s forest reserves were severely damaged.

It also then realised that biodiversity in the landscapes had declined rapidty, and low-to-no shade cocoa was expanding at the expense of forests and trees.

To heip address the above mentioned drivers of deforestation, the Ministry of Lands and naturai Resources (MLNR) has been implementing the Ghana Forest Investment Programme (HP) since May 2015.

Ghana is one of the eight (8) pilot countries implementing the FIP under the Strategic Climate Funds (SCF).

The Programme which is based on Ghana’s Investment Plan, was approved by the FIP Sub-Committee in November 2012, with a total financing of US$55 Million to fund three interrelated projects aimed at reducing deforestation and forest degradation in the country.