COMMUNITY MEMBERS TRAINED TO COMBAT BUSHFIRES IN NORTHERN REGION

As part of the implementation process of a five-year Ghana Environmental Management Project (GEMP) for Northern Ghana, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the implementing agency, has organized a two-day workshop on the development of community bushfire protection and management plans in the Northern Region.

The purpose of the workshop was geared towards supporting 18 selected members from nine (9) districts of the Northern Region to develop and lead fire prevention and management crusade.

The aim was to guide communities or districts on how to reduce the incidence of wildfire in their areas and also to engage different stakeholders at community and district levels on bushfire control and management.

Making a presentation on the overview of the GEMP, Wumbei Abukari, a Representative from the Northern Region EPA, said the project started in 2008 and was expected to phase-out by the end of 2012.

According to Mr. Wumbei, the project was an initiative of the Government of Ghana with total financial support of 7.2million Canadian dollars from the Canadian Government.

The objective of GEMP, he explained is to strengthen institutions and rural communities in the three Northern Regions of Ghana – Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions – to enable them reverse land degradation and desertification and improve food security and agricultural production.

The GEMP was invented to give true meaning to the National Action Plan (NAP) to combat desertification and drought which supported effective land use and soil management, biodiversity and vegetative cover management, water and energy resources management and improvement of rural infrastructure development.

Under the project, Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) and communities in the three regions are expected to suggest specific priority plans aimed at fighting desertification.

So far, Mr. Wumbei disclosed that, District Environmental Management Committees have been formed and inaugurated in all the 20 MMDAs of the Northern Region, support given to Ghana National Fire Service to revive 60 community fire volunteer squads and 31 environmental clubs formed in first and second cycle schools in the region.

The most serious desert prone areas of Ghana are the three Northern Regions which constitute 50% of the total land mass of the country.

Information from the 1952 forest inventory record of Ghana indicated that the total tree cover in the three Northern Regions was 41,600km2, representing 46% of the total land area of the three regions. However, by 1996 about 40% of the woodland was estimated to have been exposed to acute soil erosion, an indication that about 38,000 hectares of tree cover are lost yearly.

The Northern Regional Director of the EPA, Abu Iddrisu, mentioned bushfire, land degradation, activities of alien herdsmen, chainsaw operations, charcoal burning, illegal mining and among others, as some of the environmental problems confronting the region.

According to him, the indiscriminate bush-burning, tree felling, charcoal production, overgrazing and bad farming practices were posing danger to the climate of the weather, hence the erratic rainfalls, drought and perennial flooding the people were experiencing annually.

The EPA Director also cited lack of EPA offices in the districts, insufficient staff, meager funds, vast nature of the region and lack of commitment of some stakeholders in promoting good environmental governance as some of the challenges thwarting the efforts of the agency.

He also pointed out high levels of illiteracy, bad cultural practices like group hunting, interference with the enforcement of by-laws on the environment, inadequate livelihood options available to the people and among others, as immediate triggers of environmental problems in the region.

Mr. Abu Iddrisu therefore, called on all stakeholders in the Northern Region to speak against all forms of negative environmental practices in the area and also adopt tree planting and other good environmental practices in order to protect the earth.