West Gonja: World Vision EU LEAN Project inaugurates Landscape Management Board Council
The LMB's main aim is to work with all relevant stakeholders in the sector as watchdogs and also supervise activities that will safeguard the environment, making sure they report all environmental malpractices to the appropriate authorities for action
World Vision Ghana has inaugurated a seven-member Landscape Management Board (LMB) Executive Council, a community fire volunteer squad and trained lead farmers in the West Gonja Municipality of the Savannah region.
The LMB also forms part of the European Union-funded Landscape and Environmental Agility Across the Nation (LEAN) project being implemented by four organisations, including World Vision Ghana, Rainforest Alliance, Ecocare Ghana, and Tropenbos Ghana.
It is also designed to conserve biodiversity, build climate resilience, reduce emissions from land-use changes in the Savannah high forest, and cover all transition zones in the country.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony in Damongo on Thursday, 8 November 2023, the LEAN project manager at World Vision Ghana, Joseph Edwin Yalkabong noted that one of the biggest enemies of the implementation of the project is the indiscriminate burning of bushfires.
“One of the big enemies we know in our afforestation efforts is bushfires, so as part of the concept we are rolling out, that’s the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) concept. The model trains certain structures; that’s the lead farmers and fire volunteers”, he added.
The formation of the volunteers, he said, is to work with their communities to ensure they reduce the occurrence of fires on their farms and also within the communities.
Yalkabong said since the establishment of the project, it has trained about 500 lead farmers and 500 fire volunteers in 25 districts to help control bushfires in their various communities.
The Northern Operations Manager of World Vision, Francis Gumah, expressed worry about the fact that some practices going on in the municipality have the potential to affect the progress World Vision and other partners have made over the past years in environmental restoration.
He noted that economic trees such as shea are being felled to produce charcoal and fuel wood, adding that this practice is a serious threat to the success of the project.
“For the past decades, World Vision Ghana has worked with 445 communities, both in the Upper and Northern regions, to restore 77,898 hectares of degraded lands. That’s making the communities more resilient”, he said.
Gumah said the LEAN project had built the adaptive capacity of 3246 community members to cope with the consequences of climate change, against a target of 6,000 for West Gonja.
He reasserted World Vision’s commitment to working with all stakeholders to attain sustainable development goals 1, 2, 13, and 15, among others, for the well-being of children and their communities.
In his speech, the Municipal Chief for West Gonja, Karim Musah Kusubari commended World Vision Ghana for the LEAN project in the municipality. He said the project will go a long way toward tackling food security in the area.
“The contribution that farmers make in the direction of national development, such as the export of agricultural commodities, cannot be underestimated”, Kusubari added.
Reporting by Tahiru Abdul-Washiru in the Savannah region
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