The Deputy Volta Regional Director of the Forestry Commission (FC), Mr Isaac C.Y. Afetorgbor, has said that land owners have the right to grant or not to grant entry into their lands even if the FC has issued a permit for the extraction of any forest product.
He said unless there was an agreement covering social responsibility with an agent, the people were mandated on the basis of community ownership to protect the environment.
Community ownership Mr Afetorgbor was speaking on the topic, “Forest Ownership And Community Rights”, at a forum on forest, organised by an environmental non-governmental organisation (NGO), Friends of the Earth-Ghana (FoE-Ghana), at a recent workshop held for stakeholders at Hohoe.
It was held under the auspices of Enforcement and Governance for Sustainable Forest Management (CiSoPFLEG), a project designed for West and Central African countries and sponsored by the European Union (EU).
Medium-term target The project aims at improving governance with regard to forest products as a means of achieving sustainable management of forests in the medium term.
According to Mr Afetorgbor, chainsaw machine operators are prohibited from entering the forests because they cause revenue losses to the Forestry Commission, district assemblies, land owners and chiefs through inappropriate ways of felling wood as well as evading the payment of stampage fee which accrued to stakeholder agencies and individual land owners.
He said when communities were made aware of the gains from forests, it would arouse in them a feeling to pay close attention and check activities that destroy the forest and its resources. The communities, he said, would also demand better regulation for harvesting forest resources.
Over-dependence on foreign aid The project officer of FoE-Ghana, Mr Enoch Ampadu, said it was worrying that some countries continued to deplete their forest resources, rendering them poor for them to persistently rely on donor assistance.
He said there was donor fatigue at the moment due to over-dependence on foreign aid. He said to reverse the trend, it had become necessary to enhance monitoring of forest operations and to also increase advocacy on forest protection and ability to mobilise resources to confront illegal activities in forests.
<<Print>>