Forest Reserves in Ghana under siege of mining operations

Investigations by a group of environmentalists in Ghana have revealed the Tano-Offin Forest Reserve in the Atwima Mponua District of the Ashanti Region is under threat of mining.

According to the Forest Watch Ghana, Wacam, National Forest Forum Ghana and Kasa Initiative, the development would be a concern to all Ghanaians due to the negative impact on the environment and livelihoods.

The Exton Cubic Group, a company with close relations to the seat of power, is said to have been granted a permit to mine in the Tano Offin forest reserve.

The Offin River passes through this forest reserve which has a total area of 41,392ha and the 4^th largest Globally Significant Biodiversity Area (GSBA) in Ghana.

The forest has been classified as a protected area because of its significant biological importance to human existence.

But this biologically significant forest reserve is to undergo mining and the environmentalists want this action stopped.

The company had already mobilized equipment – a loader and a bulldozer – to the site at Kyeriaso even before the issuance of a permit by the Forestry Commission on June 10, 2016.

The records available mention one Michael Mahama as a 50% shareholder in Exton Cubic Group, a company which is said to be backed by a very powerful politician in the country whose might technocrats cannot stand, thus granting it the impunity to mine in the forest reserve.

The company is also reported to have already targeted the Fure River forest reserve in the Western region.

In the last two decades, mining companies have targeted forest reserves and the number of requests for exploration permits to mine in forest reserves has increased.

Mining in forest reserves has been met with resistance not only from civil society organizations but also from regulators including the Forestry Commission.

Considering the increasing degradation of forest reserves, dwindling forest cover and the havoc that surface mining has caused to the State even in the off reserves, the resistance is justifiable.

A research by International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO, 2011) indicates that Togo, Nigeria and Ghana have the highest rate of deforestation in the world. Ghana has a deforestation rate of 2.19 percent and a deforestation rate above one percent is alarming.

Mining in forest reserves will aggravate the already alarming rate of forest degradation in the country and wreak havoc on freshwater systems and watersheds, which are already globally scarce commodities, as well as the entire ecosystem and biodiversity.

Apart from mining in forest reserves contravening the principles underlining the establishment of forest reserves in Ghana, the Forestry Commission has had course to be worried about mining operations in even off forest reserve areas.

The Commission presented its comments on mining in forest reserves with a report titled, “Mining in Forest Reserves, Concern of the Forestry Commission” (2002) that: “Mining companies have often been required to rehabilitate even off-reserve areas they have mined. Although Off-reserve mining has gone on in Ghana for some time, we are yet to see a demonstration from industry any best practice rehabilitation suitable to tropical forests. The Commission is thus hesitant about destroying more areas with the hope of rehabilitating them. We believe we should get the rehabilitation methods right in off-reserve forests before venturing into Forest Reserves.”

Ghana and the world have been experiencing catastrophic weather conditions due among others to bad regulation and misuse of natural resources.

It will therefore be suicidal for anyone to think of further destroying the little pristine environment that is left after the massive extractive activities that has characterized governments of developing countries including Ghana.

The environmental groups are calling on and supporting regulators to live up to the task that the citizens and the Constitution of Ghana has entrusted them with.

“We also wish to call on the President of the Republic Ghana and Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the custodian of the Reserve, to help save our forest reserves, at least for our children,” they said in a statement.

Artisanal millers access new equipment for training and lumber processing

The Forestry Commission Training Center (FCTC) has installed a modern wood processing equipment to support the training and operations of artisanal millers.

The LT 40 Wood Mizer, purchased at a cost of 200 thousand Ghana Cedis, is supported by the EU-funded chainsaw project on ‘Securing the integration of legal and legitimate domestic timber markets into Voluntary Partnership Agreement’.

The project is implemented by Tropenbos International (TBI) Ghana and partners.

TBI Programmes Director, Samuel Kwabena Nketiah, says the machine is to help upscale the training of artisanal millers who want to supply legal lumber to the domestic market.

The goal, he says, is to curtail the illegalities and conflicts associated with chainsaw milling, whilst addressing livelihood issues.

“With this machine and the whole concept, we have managed to get a replacement for illegal chainsaw milling. The other side of the project also looked at alternative livelihoods because we realized that to stop people from their livelihood activities, without giving them a substitute, will serve no purpose,” said Mr. Nketiah.

Through a series of multi-stakeholder discussions under the EU Chainsaw project, artisanal milling has been accepted as an alternative to illegal chainsaw milling for supplying legal timber for the domestic market.

The small-medium scale milling of timber from specified legal sources is capable of recovering at least 50percent of dimension lumber from logs for the domestic market only.

Director of the FCTC, Joseph Boakye, says the installed equipment would be beneficial in the training of former chainsaw operators who want to formalize to legal artisanal milling.

“We will also be interested in assisting members of DOLTA – Domestic Lumber Traders Association – who can purchase their own logs and we’ll process it for them… and those who have their own plantations, if they harvest, can bring it here and we’ll process if for them and charge reasonable prices,” he added.

The piloting of artisanal milling started in 2012 and the concept to help institute and make it operational was finalized in 2014.

The capacity of potential millers were built in the areas of group dynamics and leadership, the techniques of timber milling and business management and marketing.

Five artisanal groups in the Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, Western and Eastern regions have been linked with forest concession holders for legal timber to feed their mills and are producing for the domestic market.

Alexander Amoako Boadu, Director of Operations at the Forestry Services Division of the Forestry Commission, says any means to train chainsaw operators to formalize their activities is critical to deal with the challenge of illegal tree felling.

“But the bigger picture lies with the communities that we’d expect to assist us in protecting the forest because stay very close to the forests and they see those who come in and go out,” he noted.

More artisan millers are expected to be trained to join the pilot process after which the project will be institutionalized as a major means of feeding the local markets with legal lumber in the light of Ghana’s VPA implementation.

But to achieve holistic outcomes, challenges would have to be addressed in the areas of access to raw materials, elite capture of artisanal milling, abuse of system, corruption and dwindling timber resources.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh 

Ghana issues first ever license for artisanal milling to millers

Richard Agyenim Boateng could not hide his excitement after he had been issued with the first ever license for artisanal milling at a brief event in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.

“I am relieved to have a license, I will not fear working on my mill any longer and I will have access to legal timber,” he exclaimed.

The Timber Industry Development Division (TIDD) of the Forestry Commission (FC) issued the license under the EU Chainsaw Project being implemented by Tropenbos International (TBI) Ghana and its partners.

This forms part of government strategy to promote the sustainable use of forest resources under the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) by supplying the domestic market with legal timber in order to curb rapid deforestation.

The issuance of the license is a landmark victory in the country’s efforts to quell illegal felling of trees and chainsaw milling which is associated with a high percentage of wood waste.

“I now have the courage to approach any member of the Ghana Timber Association (GTA) for wood to carry out my job,” said Mr. Agyenim, who manages RABMILL Enterprise located in the Goaso Forest District of the Brong Ahafo Region.

He has incorporated eight other millers into his business, who would soon be issued with certificates whilst machinery for his work has already been inspected by forestry officials.

Like all other millers in Ghana, Mr. Agyenim who describes himself as a ‘Saw Doctor”, or a professional miller, started his trade as a chainsaw miller in 1991 but was soon put off by the huge wastage associated with chainsaw milling which underutilised large parts of the tree and decided to develop his own machine.

“I realised even before chainsaw milling was banned in Ghana in 1998 that if I did not change to a more efficient system, I would be doomed. So, in 2008, I developed my own machine, the RABMILL (Richard Agyenim Boateng Mill), which was named after me and proved to be high yielding, with a 67 percent recovery rate as compared to 32 percent from the chainsaw,” he stated.

Mr. Agyenim later invented a second mill, the Mobile Dimension, which also has a 50 percent recovery rate. Other millers, who were impressed with the efficiency of his machines, approached him and he made six Mobile Dimension mills and two RABMILLS for them.

He has advised other millers to “stop using chainsaws and wasting our trees; we have to manage our forests well because our trees can get finished and we would have nothing to live on or bequeath to our children.”

A study conducted by the Forestry Commission (FC) in 2011 puts Ghana’s deforestation rate at a staggering 45,000 hectares per annum in the Savannah Zone and 20,000 hectares per annum in the forest Zone.

Artisanal milling was endorsed as the best alternative to chainsaw milling in Ghana after several consultations with various stakeholders in the forestry industry under an EU project that sought to identify the best way to provide the domestic market with legal timber.

Finding the means for such an endeavour is crucial to the promotion of sustainable forestry development if one considers the fact that a whopping 80 percent of timber supplied on the country’s domestic market can still be traced to illegal chainsaw milling.

Mr. Agyenim recalled that at Jamasi in the Ashanti Region where he grew up, there used to be a scarp that was forested but is now grassland because all the trees have been felled.

He noted the constitution governing the activities of artisanal millers demands that they establish tree plantations and he has plans to start one soon.

The artisanal miller has called on his fellow millers to endeavour to pay taxes levied on their trade, saying there was the need to eschew corruption from all levels of stakeholders involved in the forestry industry in order to make sustainable forestry development a reality. 

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh

Ghanaian researchers develop strategies to conserve forest resources

A five-point strategy has been developed to support local communities in Ghana to conserve forests and sustain livelihoods.

The strategies include fire prevention and control, establishment of plantations, agro-forestry, education and awareness creation, and provision of sustainable livelihood support systems.

Researchers at the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (FORIG) have, in the past one year, engaged interest groups in the Offinso Forest District of Ashanti to deliberate and agree on the strategies and action plan.

The intervention is under study titled: “Strengthening Capacity for Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Enhancing Environmental Services from Forests (REDDES)”.

Project Coordinator, Dr. Ernest Foli, says adoption and implementation of the strategies, scheduled to take off from 2014, would help reverse deforestation and degradation as well as help mitigate the impact of climate change.

The study outcomes come on the heels of the landmark report by the UN's climate panel that confirms climate change is caused by human emissions.

There is compelling evidence in Ghana to give credence to the report, says Dr. Foli, who heads the Ecosystem Services and Climate Change Unit of FORIG-CSIR and serves on the National Climate Change Committee.

“People here have agreed that the lost of forest is as a result of activities like illegal chainsaw milling, unsustainable agriculture, bushfires and other anthropogenic activities caused by human beings”, he observed. “And if the forest cover is lost it means the capacity to reduce emission is also lost because the forest has also proven to be a carbon sink”.

The aim of the REDDES study is to build capacity of African countries – Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia and Cameroon – to generate and disseminate information on reducing deforestation to stakeholders, especially policy makers and local communities.

The project is spearheaded by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), the Forestry Research Network of Sub-saharan Africa (FORNESSA) and the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO).

Forestry Officer at Offinso, Michael Sarpong, is confident the strategy would be effective when implemented due to the direct involvement of local people in the formulation process.

“The communities play very crucial role in the management of the resource and we have neglected them for some years now; it is them who normally go to the reserve and carry on illegal activities. So when we bring them on board and educate them about the need to protect the reserve, we believe it will go a long way to protect the forest reserve,” he said.

Advanced economies are believed to be causing the greatest part of global warming. But people in developing countries are most vulnerable.

“Whilst we are vulnerable and we don’t even have the resources to cope, it makes it sensible for us to take steps that, at least, at the local level we don’t deplete the forest so that we can get rain and when the rains come, they are moderated”, noted Dr. Foli.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh