Yesterday, this year’s edition of the Green Ghana Day was launched in Tamale in the Northern Region.
The Day results from the Green Ghana Project initiated in 2021 by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo under the auspices of the Ministry of Lands, and Natural Resources, as part of the government’s aggressive afforestation and re-afforestation programme to restore the country’s degraded landscape.
The launch yesterday was intended to court support of all Ghanaians to once again participate in the national tree planting exercise slated for June 7, 2024.
This is a project taking a toll on the country’s purse by way of the millions of tree seedlings bought, the cost of the annual launch events and other related expenses made, not forgetting the opportunity it has created for corrupt public officials to milk the country dry.
The Ghanaian Times thinks it is time to assess the whole project to see its impact.
The public needs to know state funds so far spent on it.
More importantly, there is the need to know how many trees planted since 2021 are doing well and why others have died.
We are in a scientific era when everything being done in the interest of the public must have proven records.
Conjecture must not be encouraged in this matter and so let the Akufo-Addo administration account to the nation regarding this project before it leaves office on January 7, 2025.
In fact, this Green Ghana Project should not have come into being in the first place if successive governments of the country had done the needful, including making environmental laws work in the country and ensuring the planting of tree seedlings in place of felled ones.
It appears the country’s managers did not adopt and stick to plans that could help preserve the country’s environment.
Elsewhere, there are systems such as green infrastructure, forest reserves and riparian vegetation to protect the environment.
It is sad that the country’s successive political administrations have looked on while these environmental systems get destroyed in the country.
For instance, a study shows that the riparian vegetation of the Black Volta Basin in the Lawra Municipality has dwindled due to livelihood activities as compared to the riparian vegetation of the Burkina Faso site across the Black Volta Basin.
What is accounting for the difference?
Can it be disputed that there are powerful hands behind environmental degradation in Ghana who are favoured by law and so their cronies can do what they like such as unbridled galamsey?
Since 2021, the Green Ghana Project has seen 10 million tree seedlings planted every Green Ghana Day and this year would make the total 40 million.
There is the need to make all the country’s environmental laws work to restore and protect forest reserves and riparian corridors, as well as green infrastructure.
That way even if the Green Ghana Project remains necessary, it should be inculcated into the lives of the people to plant trees every day to avoid the pomp and circumstance associated with the annual launch of the Green Ghana Day to make expenses that can be avoided to save the public purse some burden.
