Ghana to get $50 million for sustainable management of forests

Modern Ghana: Ghana and Burkina Faso have received endorsement of their far-reaching plans for sustainably managing their forest sectors as part of their goals for climate-resilient economic development.

The endorsements came from the Forest Investment Programme (FIP), one of the four programmes of the US $7.2 billion Climate Investment Funds (CIF), with support of the African Development Bank (AfDB) and other partners including the World Bank Group.

Under the Forest Investment Program (FIP), Burkina Faso was allocated US $30 million and Ghana was allocated US $50 million for sustainable management of their forests, through activities under programs for reducing deforestation and forest degradation and instituting sustainable forest management (REDD+), and including agro-forestry and sustainable agriculture.

...In Ghana, where timber exports account for nearly 20 per cent of the country's export base, forest cover has been reduced from 8.2 million to 4.9 million hectares over the last century. In response, Ghana is one of the first countries in Africa to institute a REDD+ strategy to address sustainability in its forest sector....

The Volta Region of Ghana, shot by Erik Kristensen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license