By Joyce Gyekye
Civil Society Organizations in Environment working in the Guinean Forests of West Africa, GFWA Biodiversity Hotspot have been commended for their work in reducing illegal activities in their catchment areas.
Biodiversity Hotspot areas are bio-geographic regions that have the richest and most threatened reservoirs of plants and animals on earth.
The commendation came from donors making Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, CEPF at its final assessment workshop that ends the second phase of funding towards the GFWA.
Joyce Gyekye was at the workshop that also addressed Media/CSOs engagement in promoting conservation.
There are 36 biodiversity hotspots globally and they cover about 23.7 million square kilometers of the earth’s land area.
However, due to extreme habitat loss following expansion of land for agriculture, exploitation of natural resources and infrastructural development due to increasing population the hotspots have reduced considerably.
The Guinean Forests of West Africa, GFWA which is one of the biodiversity hotspots covers 621 thousand 705 kilometers in two sub-regions, The Upper and Lower Guinean Forests.
It is to preserve the biological integrity of the hotspot that CEPF invested 10.1 million dollars in six years in 62 CSOs in the environment within the catchment area of GFWA.
The amount went into activities to prevent the over exploitation of the forest, including empowering communities in managing biodiversity area better, mainstreaming biodiversity in public policies and improving conservation actions for endangered species.
The grant Director of CEPF, Peggy Poncelet commended actions of members adding that “Our actions led to the support of more than 1,000 protected species and established 16.2 million hectares of protected areas among others”.
The Executive Director of CEPF, Olivier Langrand expressed gratitude to donors of the fund saying “without them, our work will be meaningless”.
He assured the CSOs that the end of the phase two which started in 2016 and ends in June 2022 does not mean the end of the project. He noted “there will be a break, but we’ll come back”.
He entreated governments within hotspots “to invest in conservation projects since they have signed on to international treaties like the Convention on Biological Diversity among others”.
The West African Primates Conservation, WAPCA based in Accra with a project site in Ankasa-Tano Community Rainforest and Cape-Three-Point Forest Reserve in the Western Region is one of the CSOs doing well in the area.
WAPCA with funding from CEPF through Noè Ghana is implementing a community based conservation initiative in the Ankara-Tano Landscape.
The Project Support Officer of WAPCA, Veronica Dandzo-Adzagudu in an interview said they are protecting four threatened primates (monkeys) namely — White-naped mangabey, Roloway, Black and White-thighed Colobus and Miss Waldron’s Colobus (which is possibly extinct in the wild).
She said “We are supporting the community to produce organic virgin coconut oil and organic cocoa using the Community Resources Management Area, CREMA model and two private sector organizations, Yayra Glover and Savannah Fruits Company”.
The fruit company assists the people with technical support that enables them to produce for the international market for premium prices, which is more than what they sell locally.
The Project Coordinator of Noè Ghana, Mabel Agba said the NGO serves as the link between the private companies and WAPCA, hence, it “facilitated the signing of purchase agreements between them.” This she noted is to promote sustainability when donor support ceases.
Countries bordering the GFWA include Ghana, Côte d’ Ivoire, Liberia, Benin, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, São Tomé and Principe.
