The World Bank yesterday approved US$103.4 million for Ghana’s Landscape Restoration and Small-Scale Mining Project.
The project is meant to reverse land degradation and strengthen integrated natural resource management of about three million hectares of degraded landscape.
Our story on page 32 gives details of the importance of the project. For instance, it is expected to help boost post COVID-19 economic recovery, create jobs and secure livelihoods in some of the poorest parts of Ghana by focusing on agricultural productivity, ecosystems management and sustainable small-scale mining.
Besides, it would enhance women’s role in local-level forest and landscape management activities, and create better income-generating opportunities that more than 250,000 people would benefit from.
Some of the poorest parts of the country include the five regions of the north, Central, North West and Volta regions.
Land degradation results in ills such as loss of land for agricultural activities, particularly farming; loss of forest cover and drying up of water bodies.
These ills, coupled with the 2017 estimates that put the cost of environmental degradation in Ghana due to unsustainable use of land for agriculture, forests, and mining at 2.8 per cent of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP), makes the project a must-succeed enterprise.
A very good percentage of the Ghanaian, including some living in the peri-urban areas, are involved in some cropping activities; so land loss in Ghana through any means has a lot of negative implications for the people and, for that matter, the country.
Some time ago, land for farming and related activities was not a problem. The story today is to the contrary due to unbridled deforestation, mining activities, urbanisation and industrial activities.
An Oxford Group Report on the country’s agriculture sector released in 2020 has it that over the last decade the relative size of the agriculture sector in Ghana has more than halved, amounting to 15.3 per cent of nominal GDP as of the second quarter of 2019, down from 31.8 per cent in 2009.
The Ghanaian Times is happy that in spite of that sorry state of affairs, the agriculture sector retains its strategic importance as a major employer, comprising 44 per cent of the labour force.
The report also states that varying estimates put the percentage of households owning or operating a farm at between 44.1 per cent and 51.5 per cent, amounting to approximately 7.3million individuals.
Another relevant report by Global Mechanism (GM), a UN entity, states that 5.4 million Ghanaians were living on degrading agricultural land in 2010 – an increase of 26 per cent in a decade, bringing the share of rural residents who inhabit degraded agricultural land up to 45 per cent of the total rural population.
What is worrying about the report is that land degradation can severely influence the population’s livelihood by restricting people from vital ecosystem services (including food and water) and increasing the risk of poverty.
Given the importance of good land for the country’s agrarian economy, any attempt to reverse or fix degraded land in the country is laudable.
The Ghanaian Times appeals to the handlers of the project to do everything above reproach, including avoidance of any corrupt practices like misappropriating project funds through unnecessary workshops and soliciting unwarranted and unskilled consultancy.
