By Emmanuel Mensah-Abludo
An inception workshop for potential Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) stakeholders for the Zini enclave has been held at Gwollu, the Sissala West District Capital. The move to establish the CREMA is a collaborative effort between the Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission and World Vision Ghana (WVG).
The workshop, which is one of the preparatory steps towards the establishment of a CREMA in the Zini enclave, has the refugee community at Zini as one of the stakeholders.
The necessity of CREMAs is to transfer natural resource management authority to local communities in off-reserve areas, empowering them to enhance their role in protecting flora and fauna, while collaboratively providing alternative, sustainable livelihoods for all stakeholders.
The Park Manager of Gbele Resource Reserve, Dr Polycarp Wulderfaar Maabier, told the workshop that: “CREMAs are not for land annexation,” noting that some people are of the opinion that CREMAs are meant to annex their land. He emphasized that CREMAs are basically for conservation purposes and nothing else.
Throwing light on conservation initiatives, Dr Maabier said that as of 2017, there were 66 CREMAs at various stages of formation, with 45 of them receiving certificates of devolution, making them autonomous.
A mention was made of the Wechiau Community Hippo Sanctuary as one of the well-known community-based conservation initiatives.
Dr Maabier dwelt on the benefits of a CREMA and its associated challenges, stressing that governance structures for CREMAs are needed at the community and district levels to be guided by a constitution and bye-law, coupled with a management plan, to ensure effective resource governance.
The Park Manager indicated that the Wildlife Division (WD) of the Forestry Commission is responsible for CREMAs, but added that NGOs and other civil society organizations (CSOs) equally support WD in the promotion of CREMAs, hence the support of WVG for the people in the Zini area to accept the CREMA concept.
Financial constraints and elite capture were identified as some of the challenges of a CREMA. In order to surmount the challenges associated with CREMAs, it was suggested that establishing a Conservation Fund, sound financial management, and building the capacity of CREMA leadership are some of the ways forward.
The Environmental, Social, and Climate Change Coordinator, WVG, Abel Nsiah, noted that the presence of WVG in Sissala West District is due to the influx of refugees who entered Ghana because of insecurity in their home country and are being hosted at the Zini refugee camp. He intimated that the entry of WVG into Sissala West was, and still is, to, among other things, deliver humanitarian emergency response/services to people in need.
Mr Nsiah pointed out: “Basically, World Vision is in Sissala West to support Zini and other surrounding communities as part of a project dubbed ‘Building Opportunities, Resilience, Infrastructure Development, Ecosystem and Social Cohesion for Refugees and Host Communities,’ known simply as the ‘Border Project’.” He said that apart from Zini (Sissala West), WVG is working in Binduri and Bawku West Districts.
Mr Nsiah indicated that the project is designed to deliver social infrastructure (WASH and health), irrigation infrastructure for all-year-round farming, and to ensure social cohesion. He added that under the CREMA initiative, a number of people will be assisted in beekeeping, climate-smart agriculture, and planting of economic trees.
The DCE for Sissala West, Abudu Fuseini Gbene, expressed gratitude to WVG and the Wildlife Division for joining forces towards the establishment of a CREMA, which he described as a socio-economic intervention that can improve the living standard of the people in the catchment area of the project. The DCE was equally thankful to the chiefs and people of Zini for playing host to refugees from Burkina Faso and other countries.
He described the gesture of hosting the refugees as “a novelty.” Mr Gbene touched on the need to upscale security measures to protect the refugees and the host communities.
The DCE appealed to all the CREMA stakeholders to give maximum assistance to the initiative for it to succeed.
The Conservation Education and Public Awareness Unit Officer of Gbele Resource Reserve, Augustine Dangbie Dordah, took the participants through the processes of establishing CREMAs and highlighted the identification of various stakeholders, community profiling, community sensitization, and feasibility study of a potential CREMA site, among others.
