Stakeholders demand sustainable natural resources management
After decades of suffering the negative impact of unsound exploitation of the country’s natural resources, the time has come for collective action to protect the natural endowments from further destruction.
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This can be achieved by collectively tackling the root causes of illegalities in the mining, forestry and land sectors.
This was the collective resolve of hundreds of stakeholders who converged on the Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel in Accra for the maiden natural resource management dialogue organised by the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), in partnership with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.
The dialogue brought together experts, policy makers, industry players and a section of the public.
Opening the dialogue, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo assured Ghanaians that the government remained committed to putting in place measures to address bottlenecks in the management of the country’s natural resources to ensure that there was value retention.
Consequently, the President indicated that plans were underway to ban the export of minerals in their raw form as a measure to promote value addition.
Again, he called on all stakeholders to support the government's resolve to halt illegal mining activities in the country.
In his opening remarks, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, gave an assurance that the government remained committed to building a robust local content regime to ensure that the exploitation of natural resources benefited the country.
He also stressed the need for all stakeholders to work hand in hand to help deal with drivers of illegalities in the land, mining and forest sectors.
Protect state lands
On managing the country’s land resources, stakeholders resolved that bold decisions must be made to deploy all of the country’s powers to enforce the regulations on land usage.
A consultant of land administration, Professor Wordworth Odame Larbi, who led the discussion on land management, said there was the urgent need to address the persistent encroachment on state lands.
He said although there was no data on the exact amount of state lands that had been encroached upon by individuals, it had been established that large tracts of lands acquired by the state had been occupied illegally.
To address the illegal occupation of state lands, the discussants agreed that the beneficiary state institutions, whose lands were encroached upon, must take steps to protect them, including taking legal action.
They also resolved that there was the need for the government to invest in taking inventory of all state lands to know the exact size of land available to the state and help to protect them.
Prof. Larbi said: “It is key that we have the inventory to begin the discussion of protecting state lands”.
With regard to state lands which had already been encroached upon, the discussants suggested that the government must grant amnesty to all individuals already occupying state lands and encourage them to come forward to regularise their ownership of the lands and secure a land title.
He said the regularisation of lands which had already been encroached upon would generate revenue for the government while addressing illegal occupation of state lands.
Sustainable forest
To promote sustainability of the forest, the discussants said the citizenry should see themselves as stewards of natural resources and the forest as an asset.
"We must stop degradation. The forest takes a long time to be restored to optimal level or state. We also need better land-use conflict management," the leader of the discussion, Prof. Dan Frimpong-Ofori, said.
At the end of the discussion, the participants agreed on on-boarding of the communities to contribute towards sustainability and awareness creation of the destruction of the forest and the benefits of sustainability.
“Forest destruction impacts the climate negatively, and when we conserve the forest, it improves the climate," Prof. Frimpong-Ofori said.
They advocated the need for empirical data to show the cost of the loss of the forest and data on the value for keeping the forest and the benefits derived from non-timber forest products.