Tropical Forest Alliance facilitates collective action for afforestation

General News on Wednesday, June 5th, 2019

Source: ghananewsagency.org

2019-06-05

The Alliance for Tropical Forests (TFA), a platform for cooperation between the public and private sectors, has expressed its willingness to facilitate a collective approach towards a free supply chain. deforestation in tropical forest countries.

Speaking to participants at a workshop in Accra, Mr. Justin Adams, TFA Global Director, said the Alliance had created a collective space over the years that had brought together stakeholders for the purpose. to mitigate problems related to agricultural and forestry products.

This has also helped to identify the limits and find ways to remove the obstacles that prevent progress in the global climate challenge.

He said that the goal of the TFA was to update the power of the collective and bring all stakeholders together to address deforestation problems in forest product producing countries, adding that forests were essential for the biodiversity.

Adams said more work had been done, but silently, adding that it was time to break the silence and work toward the common goal of creating sustainable economic growth and livelihoods for all.

He stressed the need for collective action on the part of all, with governments setting strict regulations to deal with stakeholders, who would not want to act positively to manage the supply chain free of deforestation.

According to him, in 2018 alone, 12 million hectares of forest reserves were lost in the world and if deforestation was not immediately under control, biodiversity crises could not be solved because the forest is home to 75% of the biodiversity of life.

Adams said that if stakeholders do not deliberately develop a different approach to forest conservation, tackling the global climate challenge will not succeed.

Mr. Joseph Lumumba, Africa Regional Director of TFA, said the workshop had played an important role in shaping a new TFA strategy aimed at bringing together all the stakeholders involved in the chain. supply of commodities to fight collectively against deforestation.

He added that the goal of the TFA was to help all stakeholders to achieve a common understanding of the jurisdictional sustainability approach in order to make its implementation as practical as possible. as possible.

Mr Lumumba stated that the TFA was in no way an executor, but that he had the ability to facilitate and ensure the effective implementation of collective actions to badist in identify the location of priority landscapes for afforestation.

He said it was important that the government take into account all the factors related to the exploitation of bauxite in the Atewa forest, dissociating the economic interest of the long-term conservation of the forest. a hot spot of biodiversity.

He added that although the government has the prerogative to decide the fate of mining in the Atewa forest, it was important to take into account not only the economic interest, but also the social, ecosystem-based uses biodiversity of the forest.

Roselyn Fosuah Adjei, Acting Director of the Climate Change Directorate of the Ghana Forestry Commission, said the government has developed comprehensive strategies to mitigate deforestation in the country.

She added that the government had put in place a cocoa sector development strategy project aimed at improving farmers' productivity without compromising the environment.

She added that there was also the 2016 Forest Sector Master Plan, which included rehabilitating and restoring degraded forest reserves and strengthening the country's carbon stocks.

Adjei said the government is also committed to the REDD + strategy, which is an incentive mechanism to reward tropical forest countries for their efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation to combat climate change.

She said REDD + would strengthen national and subnational institutional coordination on cocoa governance and forest landscapes, increase the visibility of smallholders and their accessibility to the credit mechanism.