By: Mercy Darko
Civic Response, a non-governmental organization, has launched a year-long sensitization campaign to enforce Social Responsibility Agreements (SRAs) to promote sustainable forest management. SRAs, legally require timber operators to pay 5 percent of their stumpage fees to the Forestry Commission, which is then used to provide financial incentives to communities living near forest reserves. However, full implementation remains a challenge.
Civic Response Head of Programs, Albert Katako, noted that while some progress has been made, the government must show greater commitment to prioritizing forest governance and protecting local communities from being short-changed.
In addition, Mr. Katako raised concerns over illegal mining activities, which continue to threaten and degrade the country’s forest reserves.
He made these remarks at the inception workshop for the project. Social Responsibility Agreements, SRAs are agreements under the Ghana’s Forestry Laws, (L.I 2254) which oblige companies to agree on a range of issues including compensation and observance of cultural norms with communities ahead of logging activities.
The adoptions of SRAs in 2017 was in part driven by Ghana’s implementation of its Voluntary Partnership Agreement with the European Union. As part of the Agreement, Ghana started paying added attention to the implementation of laws and regulations applicable to forest operations, including those focusing on SRAs.
The objective of the year-long project dubbed Support for the Implementation of the Social Responsibility Agreements is to enhance the effective implementation, monitoring and transparency of the SRAs by engaging key stakeholders to give them better understanding of the SARs.
Mr Katako explained the rationale behind the project, outlining some challenges.
“SRA implementation has been going on for more than a decade now. This project is to remind stakeholders of the timelines. We have been building the capacity of communities to enhance their knowledge on SRAs. Through these engagements, we identified some challenges where chiefs try to hijack the SRAs after receiving royalties and nothing goes to the communities which is not fair. So we want to address these gaps”, he noted.
Mr. Katako indicated that while companies have complied with the SRAs more needs to be done to ensure accountability. He also touched on the impact of illegal mining popularly known as galamsey on forest reserves.
” Companies have been complying. SRAs were initially voluntary, so the companies took advantage of the communities and abused it. However, now the situation has changed and now communities are now enlightened. Without SRAs, you cannot operate”, he stated.
“Government should continue to show that political will to ensure that forest governance is through multi-stakeholder approach so that we can all commit to doing what we are all required to do. For instance, timber companies are destroying the forest reserves through illegal mining popularly known as galamsey. These canker should be addressed to save the forest reserves”, Mr. Katako added.
The Manager of Systems and Data Reconciliation at the Forestry Commission’s Timber Validation Department outlined the specific sanctions timber operators will face for non-compliance with the SRAs laws.
“As a government agency, we are suppose to ensure that the SRA is signed and there is compliance. Now the compliance is linked to licencing so because of this the compliance level is high. If a company fails to sign or comply the SRA, there are sanctions. The company licence will be revoked and the sales licence, export permit among others can also be revoked”, Mr. Owusu Sekyere noted.
The project is spearheaded by Civic Response in collaboration with Rights and Advocacy Initiative Network and Forestry Commission with funding from the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade and Trade.
