Bushfires occur widely in the northern Ghana and are very pervasive and extensive in nature. It affects the composition and density if vegetation, frustrates our efforts at sustainable development, and threatens our future survival, by contributing immensely to desertification and general environmental degradation.
The diverse and interactive nature of causes of bushfires calls for a concerted approach in curbing the menace, to reduce the toll on the developmental agenda. It is undoubtedly impossible to find a single panacea, when it comes to the provision of solutions to the bushfire menace, due to the varied nature of its driving forces.
To this effect, it is most welcoming that the government and its agencies continue to express their commitment to partner and support initiatives of any individual or entity to combat the menace of bushfires.
Issues bordering on the environment must thus of paramount importance to the regions of constituting northern Ghana since majority of the people in this part of the country depended on the environment, through agriculture, animal rearing fishing among others, for their sustenance and survival.
At a workshop held recently in Wa for traditional authorities on the bushfire menace in Northern Ghana, stakeholders including the Ministry of Science, Environment and Technology, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Ghana Fire Service demonstrated their preparedness to work together with other stakeholders such as chiefs, pupils, women and youth groups in the three northern regions to address this environmental plight. However, the emphasis was on the chiefs as key stakeholders in the combat against bushfires.
“Why burn the bush for rats, rabbits, and grasscutters, if we can rear them and other animals all year long? Is bush burning an option for a region which is already poverty stricken? Must we be reminded that bush burning has a direct bearing on climate change, where recently we experienced severe harmattan in the mornings and unbearable heat in the evenings? These were some critical questions raised by the Deputy Minister.
The Deputy Upper West Regional Minister, Mr. Kale Caesar believes ploughing firebreaks around farms likewise other major agricultural investments is very important but maintains that key stakeholders like chiefs, religious leaders and assembly members, can liaise to ensure the collective responsibility of prescribing deterring punishments in the quest to make bush burning a history in the country.
The non-burning concept initiated by the Nandom Paramountcy under the able leadership of the Na Dr. Puore Puobe Chiir VII has been acclaimed as a model for replication, as far as combating bushfires in the north is concerned. Though Goziiri is a farming community, since the mid-80s, non-burning concept was introduced and has been sustained and extended to over fifteen communities in the region by EPA. The stakeholders pledged to sustain and extend the initiative to other communities in the region and northern Ghana at large.
Ghana and Canadian Governments through their respective agencies, the EPA and CIDA are implementing a CIDA five-year Ghana Environmental Management Project (GEMP) in the Upper West Region, which is located in a fragile ecological belt of Ghana.
The goal of the project is to strengthen Ghanaian institutions and the rural communities to enable them reverse land degradation trends in the three northern regions of Ghana, to enable them adopt sustainable land management practices to improve food security and reduce poverty.
However, the successful implementation of the GEMP would greatly depend on how successful bushfires would be contained in the region.
First phase of the programme has been successfully completed, Mr. Asher Nkegbe, the Acting Upper West EPA Director told the participants. Some of the activities of the first phase of the project include formation of forty-two women’s groups to ensure that gender was mainstreamed into the programme, radio programmes, and the conducting of socio-economic baseline studies for all the thirty pilot communities to establish benchmark conditions, to facilitate monitoring of change in land resources.
Stakeholders must indeed do something about bushfires.
ReplyDeleteYes stake holders can do well by taking the cattle farmers on, most especially the Fulani people. They base on the assumption that when a community is eliminated another takes place and so are always burning the bush, expecting new grass to evolve to feed their animals. In fact it is a very serious issue.
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