To this end, Heritage for Cultural Development (HECDEV) a youth group focusing on environmental sustainability and conservation, in collaboration with A Rocha Ghana, has organised a two-day training workshop on the nature and components of the forest reserve for some selected female journalists from the Eastern and Ashanti Regions.

The workshop which was part of the HECDEV “our forest, our heritage: youth actions in safeguarding a heritage at a crossroad” programme, is aimed at building the capacities of the female journalists to support the advocacy to protect the Atewa Forest reserve.  

Mr. Prosper Kwame Antwi, Programmes Manager for A Rocha Ghana, said women had critical roles to play in the protection of the environment, adding that, the role of female journalists in advocating against the conversion of the Atewa Forest reserve into a mining site was crucial.

He said development could take place without compromising the environment’s ecology and that, the Atewa forest was a unique one that should not be disturbed through mining activities.

Mr Antwi pointed out that the forest was a water-head for three main water bodies, the Densu, Ayensu and the Birim Rivers which supported about five million Ghanaians with their day to day domestic and industrial water needs.

The forest, is also, the only biggest upland evergreen forest in Ghana with exceptional life forms, of different animals, that are internationally recognised as a hotspot.

Mr. Antwi said as a developing country, Ghana could derive numerous benefits from the Atewa forest, especially its ecotourism potential for revenue generation and there was the need to intensify dialogues with all key stakeholders to identify them through landscape approach.

“Bauxite can be equally mined at Awaso and Nyinahin which had high deposits of bauxite”, he said, explaining that, “that the grades of bauxite at Awaso and Nyinahin were higher than Atewa and in terms of quantity” he pointed out.

Mr Antwi said environmentalists, development partners, and members of communities surrounding the reserve had proposed that the forest reserve be upgraded into a national park and an ecotourism centre to give it total protection.

He said studies had shown that if this was done, with conservation-based programmes, the benefits that the nation would derive would be far greater than the bauxite mining.

Mr. Stephen Ofori, Deputy Director of HECDEV, said there was the need to target the youth in the fringe communities to know and understand the value of the forest reserves to enable them to come together with one voice to protect the reserve.