Nicholas Jengre, Country Director of Rainforest Alliance, has commended the remarkable achievements of the Landscapes and Environmental Agility Across the Nation (LEAN) project.
Speaking on the project’s implementation, Mr. Jengre mentioned the significant strides made in tree planting and environmental restoration, despite challenging conditions. “I have seen projects come and go, but this particular one, especially in the savannah landscape, where everybody thinks and feels that it is very difficult to grow trees, to be able to nurture trees and ensure that the trees thrive, what I observed in the field where the intervention is happening is that the trees, within two and a half years, are all over the landscape.”
He spoke to the media after a field visit to the project sites in some communities of the Kassena-Nankana West District of the Upper East Region.
Mr. Jengre emphasized the importance of adaptive strategies and collaboration with various stakeholders to ensure the project’s success.
One critical aspect of the project’s sustainability, the Country Director of Rainforest Alliance emphasized, is the development of bylaws with the involvement of project teams, chiefs, and key stakeholders.
“Bylaws are something that needs to be developed together with the project team, with the chiefs, with key stakeholders within the landscape, ensuring that we all agree to protect our environment. And when that is done, all the parties will support the process to ensure that the trees are well-nurtured.”
The LEAN project has the Farmer Managed Natural Resources (FMNR) concept implemented in communities such as Navio-Samwo and Banyonu, where community members are trained to protect the environment by pruning unwanted shrubs of already existing trees to restore the fast-depleting forest without necessarily planting new trees.
The project is funded by the European Union and implemented by World Vision Ghana in the Savannah landscape, EcoCare Ghana and Tropenbos Ghana in the Transition, and Rainforest Alliance in the High Forest Zone.
Vassileva Alorvor, a campaigner with EcoCare Ghana, expressed her enthusiasm about participating in the validation exercise for the Landscapes and Environmental Agility Across the Nation (LEAN) project, currently being implemented across different landscapes in Ghana.
“My takeaway from LEAN and this whole verification exercise is that everything should be a bottom-up approach because when we dump projects on local communities, they don’t feel any sense of ownership. Where local communities are the ones forefronting the activities, all the restoration innovations, and the dialogues. And so for sustainability’s sake, it’s good and we are hoping they can take it on beyond the end of June.”
Source: A1Radioonline.Com|101.1MHz|Joshua Asaah|Bolgatanga|
