By Joyce Gyekye
Ghana is taking steps to put a price on the benefits nature provides, as a technical committee is inaugurated to develop a National Framework for Payment of Ecosystem Services (PES).
The initiative will protect forests, rivers, and wetlands across the country. The committee was inaugurated at a three-day national stakeholders workshop at Peduasi in the Eastern Region.
The PES links conservation actions to agreed benefits and promotes fair sharing of gains from ecosystem protection. The Chief Director of the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology (MEST), Suweibatu Adams, in a speech read on her behalf, acknowledged the existence of policies like the revised Forestry and Wildlife Policy, National Climate Change Policy, REDD Plus Strategy, and the revised National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan as part of measures to promote conservation practices. She noted that such policies are not enough to deliver transformation without the provision of innovative and practical incentives for communities and resource users.
“A national PES framework offers a practical opportunity to place actual values on ecosystem services as incentives to reward farmers, landowners, and communities for conservation efforts,” Madam Suweibatu Adams said. The Chief Director urged participants to work together to ensure that the framework supports resource mobilization and devises benefits to those protecting the country’s landscape.
The Landscape Manager for the Ghana Cocoa Belt at the World Resources Institute (WRI), Eric Lartey, said his organization is supporting the government to establish the PES framework to help close the funding gap globally. He stated that of the 351 billion dollars needed globally in restoring landscapes, public and private funding catered for only 51 billion dollars, leaving a shortfall of 300 billion dollars annually. He said, “The framework will lay down the necessary legal and governance infrastructure that will help those actors interested in restoration to have that confidence to invest into the sector.”
The Director of Operations (Natural Forest) at the Forestry Services Division of the Forestry Commission, Yaw Boakye, cited Costa Rica as a country reaping benefits of PES and mentioned carbon sequestration, hydrological services, agribusiness, tourism, and oil and gas as low-hanging fruits for the scheme to utilize in Ghana. The technical committee members of PES are made up of individuals from 18 institutions, including the EPA, Water Resources Commission, Soil Research Institute of the CSIR, World Resources Institute, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
