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The Director of Climate Change at the Forestry Commission, Joseph Appiah-Gyapong, has underscored the need for stakeholders in local communities to work together to protect the country's forests from destruction.
He said that forests played a crucial role in enhancing the livelihoods of communities, and the people at the grassroots must take a keen interest in preserving them.
Particularly, he stressed that in the era where illegal mining threatened the integrity of forest reserves, affected the cocoa sector, and hampered biodiversity, it was important for residents of mining communities to help tackle the menace by not allowing the invasion of forest areas.
He made the call in an interview with the Daily Graphic at a one-day dialogue session on the Modified Taungya System (MTS) and tree tenure implementation in the cocoa-forest landscape held in Accra.
The dialogue was held by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the Forestry Commission and brought together stakeholders in the forestry and cocoa sectors.
They shared experiences on MTS practices, discussed the tree tenure policy and benefit sharing rights, as well as operationalisation and funding opportunities for tree tenure implementation.
The participants also discussed the critical role of the national register of farms and trees in advancing tree tenure implementation.
The MTS in Ghana is an agroforestry programme where farmers cultivate food crops alongside tree plantations in degraded forest reserves, with the goal of reforesting these areas while also providing food, income and a share of the timber revenues.
Under MTS, farmers receive land to grow crops until the tree canopy closes, after which they receive 40 per cent of the timber revenue.
The system is meant to enhance food security, improve livelihoods, promote sustainable land use and help to restore forest cover. Key aspects of the MTS are agroforestry, reforestation, farmer benefits, community involvement and land use.
Mr Appiah-Gyapong said the MTS was a great initiative to address the massive destruction of the forest, especially by illegal miners.
He said the MTS had sensitisation, awareness creation, and behaviour change components that frowned upon illegal mining in forest areas and encouraged community members to prevent such activities.
‘As part of the MTS regime, we create awareness of farmers to know that it is better to have crops while protecting the forest than subjecting it to illegal mining,” he said
Again, he said the carbon payments component that accompanied the MTS also motivated farmers to engage in sustainable farming.
The Deputy UNDP Resident Representative in Ghana, Shaima Hussein, underscored the need for local communities and people at the grassroots to protect forest reserves.
She said the active participation of local communities in green initiatives was critical for the sustainable management of forest resources.
Ms Hussein also said that close collaboration between stakeholders in the forest sector would facilitate the implementation of the country’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) related to sustainable forest management.
She added that the MTS was more than a reforestation approach because it was a proven model that helped restore degraded forests while securing livelihoods for farmers.
“According to the Forestry Commission’s 2021 and 2022 annual reports, 21,723.9 hectares of degraded land were restored through MTS during those two years.
"I reference these figures to indicate that, at scale, the MTS model holds great potential to enhance forest resource integrity and sustainability," she said.
Ms Hussein added that by involving smallholder farmers and forest communities in management and governance, the MTS had reduced land degradation and strengthened community ownership of restoration efforts.
"We believe that these benefits can be fully realised when MTS implementation is paired with secure and transparent tree tenure arrangements," she said.
