Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have questioned Ghana's commitment to sustaining the Natural Resources and Environment Governance (NREG) project, after donor funding supporting the project ends this year.
They were not sure whether the Government would be committed to setting aside some budget to sustain the project, which seeks to assist government to ensure equity, accountability and transparency in the governance of natural resources and the environment.
At the Third Annual Civil Society Review of the Natural Resource and Environment Sector in Ghana on the theme; " Natural Resources and Environmental Governance for Sustainable Human Development in Ghana: Perspectives of Civil Society", the participants admitted that CSOs must strategies sustainable ways of funding their own programmes to help sustain the various programmes that were instituted under the NREG project.
The yearly review forum in Accra brought together about 100 representatives of State and non-State actors to constructively examine the perspectives of CSOs on NRE sectors, especially their analysis of key achievements, gaps, challenges and recommendations for priority sectors.
The forum was organised by KASA Ghana, an initiative to promote concerted action and a more coordinated engagement of CSOs.
Mr. Zakaria Yakubu, Programme Coordinator, KASA, said the review forum would examine issues in the sub-sectors of Mining, Forestry and Wildlife, Oil and Gas, Land, Environment; including Climate Change and Desertification, Fisheries and Water.
He said the outcome of the review was expected to feed into the annual national Environment and Natural Resources sector review process.
Mr. Yakubu explained that under the NREG project, capacities of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) were strengthened to be responsible for the management of natural resources and improving their governance.
He said the project helped in broadening participation of non-state actors, strengthened coalition among the various CSOs, increased government revenue in the forest sector and ensured the mainstreaming of environmental issues into development planning through stringent environmental impact assessment.
Mr. Yakubu however indicated that, in spite of the achievements under the project, there were still more to be done but lacked funding, which was critical to sustaining the gains made over the past five years of the project.
He said CSOs were worried that with the oil production, there was the tendency for government to shift focus to health at the expense of other areas such as issues of the environment.
Mr. Yakubu challenged government to remain committed to investing in environmental issues such as climate change, deforestation, land degradation and environmental pollution and sanitation.
Dr Ton Van der Zon, First Secretary, Environmental and Water Advisor, Kingdom of the Netherlands, who provided funding for the five-year pilot project at an annual cost of seven million euros, stressed on the sustainability of the investment made so far.
He indicated that although donor funding would end this year, the beneficiaries including Civil Society must explore sustainable ways of securing funding for their programmes.
Dr Van der Zon noted that the issue of environment was broad and therefore required a multi-sectoral approach as well as inter- ministerial collaboration and networking to effectively and efficiently deal with the issues.
He commended KASA for its leadership initiative and instituting a platform for CSOs to share knowledge and ideas that could inform policy makers on critical issues on the environment.
Nana Kwabena Nketia V, Paramount Chief of Essikado Traditional Area, called for a renewed orientation of the minds of the citizenry towards their environment, stressing that, people must learn to co-exist with other members of their environment without destroying each other.
"The earth must be seen as our responsibility, therefore our duty to save its image must be critical to us," he said.
Nana Nketia noted that in spite of all the rich natural resources, most Ghanaians still lived in abject poverty at the expense of the rich and affluent in society, and encouraged communities in forest areas to put in place their own systems to protect the ecology around them to help protect future generations.**
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