Story by Dennis Bebane
The EU Resilience Against Climate Change REACH Project has embarked on its yearly tree planting exercise in the Upper West Region. The project is planting 9,000 seedlings in 18 schools in six districts of the Upper West Region this year.
The targeted areas are Wa Municipality, Lawra Municipality, Wa East, Wa West, Nadowli Kaleo, and Jirapa Districts.
Communication Officer for REACH, Ms. Adiza N-Saing-oh Yesseh speaking to GBC on the sidelines of the exercise at Northern Star Senior High School in Wa, said one of the key areas dear to GIZ is the aftercare for the trees planted.
She said anyone can plant a tree any day, but the most important thing is to ensure that it survives. Ms Yesseh said the project has gone beyond just the planting of trees and put in place a monitoring mechanism to ensure that the seedlings planted are being taken care of and when there is a need to replace those that have died.
She said the project is not only targeting its catchment areas but also includes the schools because the students are also affected by climate change.
She observed that the current climate change being experienced in the country is caused by human activities, and there is a need for attitudinal change in Ghanaians towards the environment.
Ms Yesseh said it is important for the project to inculcate the younger ones with the interventions so that they can appreciate the essence of trees.
“As young ones, they should not see issues of the environment as abstract. Most of the time, I think they don’t see these things affecting them also. They hear about it, climate change and environmental degradation, and they see it as something that happened elsewhere. They only get the impact of it, but their actions and inactions also contribute to it. As young people, you should be aware that your actions have an impact on the soil. For instance, if you drink sachet water and you throw away the polythene around, it will not decompose, and that is going to affect the soli, and there are implications for your parents if they are farmers. It has implications for their farmland, and when that happens, it has consequences for the household. So, we need to let them appreciate the fact that these issues affect them too, and the need to address it,” Ms Yesseh explained.
Ms Yesseh advised the students to replicate the same in their various localities and also serve as ambassadors for positive attitudes towards the environment in society.
She urged Ghanaians to see tree planting as everybody’s business because one cannot underplay the importance of trees in human life. She noted that human survival is directly hinged on the trees, and “when the last tree dies, the last man dies”.
Senior House Master of Northern Star Senior High School, Mohammed Issah, commended GIZ for the initiative. He called for by-laws in all communities to ensure that anytime a tree is cut, it should be replaced.
“All the people in the country must put rules and regulations in place. If there is a need to cut a tree, you must replace it. If all the trees were dying, automatically, our lives would be less. Even in hospitals, trees help cure some sicknesses because some illnesses cannot be cured by drugs. The environment also helps.
So, if the environment is healthy, you are protected against such diseases. We should put by-laws so that when you cut a tree, you replace it so that there will not be a year or time to come when there will not be trees.”
The tree planting exercise took place in Zingu JHS, Northern Star SHS in the Wa Municipality and Yirbilee JHS in the Wa East District. Seedlings planted include cashew, mango, orange, and acacias.
The EU REACH Project every year takes advantage of the rainy season to plant trees as part of its activities to retain soil cover and build resilience against climate change.
The REACH Project in the Upper West Region is aimed at supporting farmers with sustainable farming methods and also promoting conservation agriculture through agroforestry to enable farmers to build resilience against climate variability.
