The Organisation for Indigenous Initiatives and Sustainability (ORGIIS-Ghana), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) has engaged with the Upper East Regional House of Chiefs to facilitate the process of drafting by-laws to help protect and preserve Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in the area.
Unlike Cocoa and Rubber Trees, which have legal framework to protect them, there is currently no legal framework that protects NTFPs such as shea, baobab, parkia and moringa which are the major livelihoods of the people in the Northern Ecological Zones of the country.
This creates the challenges of degradation through competing uses such the shea value chain versus charcoal producers’ preferences. The NTFPs in the Savannah landscape are mainly women-centred value chains and any threat to these value chains is a threat to the businesses of women.
Speaking at the engagement forum with the traditional rulers on Friday, the Executive Director of ORGIIS-Ghana , Mr Julius Awaregye explained that unlike cocoa and the rubber trees that had legal laws to protect them from being destroyed indiscriminately by some unscrupulous people, the NTFPs which are the major livelihoods of the people in the five regions of the north had no legal law to protect them.
This, he stressed, did not only give freedom to people to cut down the trees for charcoal production, but also gave room to those who were into agriculture commercial farming to cut them down freely depriving the communities of their major livelihoods.
The Executive Director who cited countless examples where many shea and baobab trees had been cut down indiscriminately for charcoal production and export of baobab leafs to Burkina Faso, emphasised that if traditional rulers who were the custodians of the people and customs did not sit up, the NTFPs which had cultural values would be extinct, rendering their culture valueless.
He explained that it was to help address the challenge that his outfit with funding support from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was engaging all the Regional House of Chiefs of the five regions of the north to see how to address the issue.
“The essence of this project is to secure the support of the houses of chiefs in the five regions towards the development of customarily binding laws for protection of resources of cultural values to traditional councils,” the Executive Director stressed,
Mr Abdulai Jaladeen, a legal practitioner from the Tater Law Consult schooled the traditional rulers that per the Chieftaincy Act 2008, section 49-56, they were empowered to come out with by-laws to protect and preserve natural resources.
The legal practitioner who told the chiefs that positive cultural practices formed part of the 1992 constitution of Ghana, entreated the chiefs to test the provision of the chieftaincy act that empower them to make by-laws to protect natural resources.
He added that per the Local Government Act sections 79-83, Assemblies were also empowered to make by-laws and implement them to help preserve and conserve the natural resources and therefore appealed to the chiefs to collaborate with the Assemblies to come out with affective by-laws to help fight the canker.
The President of the Upper East Regional House of Chiefs who is also the Paramount Chief of the Chiana Traditional Area, Pe Dituudini Adiana Ayagitam III, on behalf of the house, thanked ORGIIS-Ghana and the funding agency, FAO for the support.
He gave the assurance that the house was committed to the course and appealed to the NGO to continue to facilitate the process to ensure that the house come out with concrete by laws to help protect the natural resources from being extinct.
