CURRENT STATUS OF FOREST- GHANA

Global forest cover is 3952 million ha, about 30% of the world’s land area and most relevant for the Carbon cycle is that between 2000 and 2005 gross deforestation continued at a rate of 12.9 million ha/yr mainly as a result of converting forests to agricultural land, expansion of settlements, and infrastructure and often for logging (Baker et al, 2007).

Ghana on the other hand, covers a total land area of 23.95 million ha, spanning two main vegetation zones, the High Forest and the Savanna vegetation. The High Forest Zone (HFZ) covers a land area of about 8.2 million ha out of which 1.76 million ha has been put under conservation, protection in the form of about 260 forest and wildlife reserves (Affum-Bafoe; Marfo, 2010). Marfo (2010), estimates the current rate of deforestation and forest degradation in Ghana to be approximately 65,000 ha per year mainly due to wildfires, agriculture and indiscriminate logging particularly through chainsaw milling.

Forests play crucial roles in the socio-econmic well being of Ghanaians, currently the forest sector ranks fourth in foreign exchange earner for the national economy, after Cocoa, Gold and tourism. The forest sector in Ghana apart from environmental and ecological roles contributes about 6% to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), employs 2.5 million people and exports wood products worth about US$ 200 million annually (EPA, 2006)

The human induced environmental changes which are key drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in Ghana include, forest industry overcapacity, policy and market failures in the timber sector, increasing population in both rural and urban areas, increasing local demand for agricultural and wood products, high demand for wood and forest products on the international market, heavy dependence on charcoal and wood fuel for rural and urban energy, limited technology development in farming systems and continued reliance on cyclical “slash and burn” agriculture (The Forest Dialogue, 2009).

National attempts to address deforestation and forest degradation have been an important national agenda for many years. These include Ghana-EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) under the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative by which the EU commits to support good forest governance, and Ghana commits itself to export only legally sourced wood and wood products to Europe. There are also on-going programmes such as Forest Certification (FSC) and the National  Forest Plantation Development Programmes. The Natural Resources and Environmental Governance programme (NREG) is also on-going to review forestry sector policy and legislation to create  a policy and legislative frame that is more suitable for dealing with the present day sector challenge.

At the moment, the forestry sector is governed by legislation including the Forestry Commission Act of 2005 (Act 543), the Plantation Development Fund Act (as amended) of 2002 (Act 623) and the Timber Resource Management Act (as amended) (Act 547 of 117 and Act 617 of 2002) and their Legislative Instruments (LI 1649 and LI1715) under the 1994 Forest and Wildlife Policy (Marfo, 2010). 

References

Baker T. et al, 2007; Technical Summary. In : Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution  of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

EPA, 2006: impacts of climate change on Ghana’s Forest Ecosystems and Biodiveristy. EPA Policy Advice Series No.7, pp2-4.

FC, 2010: Forestry Commission Annual Report for 2010. 63pp

Marfo E. 2010: Chainsaw Milling in Ghana Context, Drivers and Impacts. pp1-10

TFD, 2009. The Forests Dialogue. Implementing REDD+ in Ghana: Background Paper for REDDplus Readiness Field Dialogue in Ghana, November 2009. 19pp

UKCIP, 2003. Climate Adaptation; Risk, Uncertainty and Decision-Making. Technical Report, 153pp.