The five-year project (2017-2020) is aimed at improving rural livelihoods; ensuring food security as well as promoting resilience to climate change of 500,000 smallholder farmers in eight African countries including Ghana.

The project dubbed, “Reversing Land Degradation in Africa by Scaling-up Evergreen Agriculture ‘Re-greening Africa’ project intends to restore the essential ecosystem services such as improving water soil fertility, erosion control, and enhancing water cycle buffering.

The ‘Re-greening Africa’ project is targeted at 15,000 smallholder farmer beneficiaries within 150 communities in the Mion district to cover an entire area of 30,000 hectares of land to enhance evergreen agricultural practices.

The project is funded by the European Union and implemented by World Vision in Bawku West and Garu Tempane districts as well as CRS an implementing partner operating in the Mion district in the Northern Region.

Mr Mawuli Asigbee, Agriculture Programmes Manager at CRS speaking at the launch underscored the need for stakeholders to be involved in the information sharing process and to solicit support in rolling out the project to achieve its intended purpose.

He explained that the project would reverse outmoded farming practices as well as facilitating the incorporation of tree planting and tree management in farming activities to ensure enabling conditions for re-greening.

Mr Asigbee indicated that, unsustainable farming practices including; slash and burn, bush fires, sand winning, charcoal burning were the menaces contributing to the degradation of the environment of which the project would end in the district.

Mr Iddrisu Abu, Northern Regional Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said traditional authorities should lead as the frontliners at ensuring behavioural changes of community members and enforcing laws to protect the environment.

He added that, Civil Society Organisations (CSO’s) and NGOs needed to have clear communication strategies and engagement plans with various stakeholders to ensure inclusiveness to adequately address environmental and developmental challenges.

Mr Mohammed Hashim, the Mion District Chief Executive (DCE) said government initiatives of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) and Planting for Export (PE) focused primarily on enhancing food security and contributing to carbon sequestration in the atmosphere.

He appealed to NGO’s to strengthen their coordination of projects with government agencies to adequately address challenges to bring a desire change especially, human activities that degraded land leading to climate change.

Participating stakeholders included: Traditional Authorities, Assembly members, EPA, Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Forestry Commission, Mion District Agricultural Department, and the Ghana Peasant Farmers Association.