The Vice President, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang has charged the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources to continue to decentralize initiatives and measures being put in place to end the destruction of the environment.
Professor Naana Jane on Tuesday, January 27 paid a working visit to the Ministry to have first-hand information about activities and what can be done to further address challenges.
The sector minister, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, in a presentation said over the last year, government has worked to improve the forest reserves and water bodies.
Regarding the forests, the Minister said the “target was to plant 30 million seedlings to reclaim our forest lands. I’m happy to tell you, the first year, we planted over 28 million seedlings just first year. In partnership with the private sector, we were also able to recover 340, hectares of degraded mining areas in the Western and Ashanti regions.’’
Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah also noted that Ghana, last year, became the first country in Africa to have a Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) license.
“That is the only country to be able to export legal timber to the European market. We’ve taken that step because it’s very critical for the world to see that we are determined to basically protect sustainable environment,” Mr Buah said.
He blamed institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Minerals Commission, as being part of the problem for the degraded lands.
“I’m happy that we’ve been able to look at the review of our licenses. As we speak, small scale licenses, over 255 or so has been revoked. We continue to review the processes, and those who have not followed the right channels, we will give them the opportunity to correct the processes and make sure that the Minerals Commission has the capacity and the systems to be the regulator, the policeman in this sector,” he stated.
The Vice President lauded him and the team for the efforts and some successes chalked so far.
‘’I want to commend you; the interventions are very important. We will support you,’’ she said.
