Ghana has obtained $4,862,280 from the World Bank for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
It is the first of 4 funds anticipated beneath the Emission Reductions Payment Agreement (ERPA) with the World Bank which goals at encouraging member international locations to implement actions to cut back carbon emission.
Ghana, one in every of 15 international locations which have signed ERPAs with the World Bank, is implementing actions inside a six-million-hectare stretch of forest, the place biodiversity and forests are beneath stress from cocoa farming and unsustainable harvesting, and small-scale mining.
According to an announcement issued by the World Bank in Accra sureterday, Ghana obtained the funds from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) for reducing 972,456 tons of carbon emissions for the first monitoring period which was between June to December 2019 beneath the programme.
Ghana, it mentioned, thus turn into the second nation in Africa after Mozambique to obtain funds for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, generally often called REDD+.
“This payment is the first of four under the country’s ERPA with the World Bank to demonstrate potential for leveraging results based payments for carbon credits,” Pierre Laporte, World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone said.
Subject to displaying outcomes from actions taken to cut back deforestation, he mentioned, Ghana was eligible to obtain as much as $50 million for 10 million tons of carbon emissions diminished by the tip of 2024.
On his half, Samuel A. Jinapor, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, mentioned, Ghana’s success was because of a few years of dialogue, consultations, and negotiations with native communities, conventional authorities, authorities companies, personal sector, civil society and non-governmental teams.
He mentioned the emission reductions fee would additional promote confidence in Ghana’s REDD+ course of for motion to cut back deforestation and forest degradation whereas empowering native community livelihoods.
“The road to global 1.5 degrees cannot be achieved without healthy standing forests, and Ghana is committed to making it possible,” the Minister added.
Although Cocoa drives Ghana’s financial system, it’s also one of many essential causes of deforestation and forest degradation within the southeast and western areas of the nation.
In relation to the actions, the assertion mentioned, stakeholders have been working to assist some 140,000 Ghanaian farmers improve cocoa manufacturing utilizing climate-smart agro-forestry approaches, moderately than slash and burn land-clearing methods that decimate forests.
“More sustainable cocoa farming helps avoid expansion of cocoa farms into forest lands and secures more predictable income streams for communities,” it said.
Ghana’s Cocoa Board, it mentioned, was taking part within the REDD+ course of, in addition to a number of the most essential cocoa and chocolate corporations on this planet, including World Cocoa Foundation members like Mondelēz International, Olam, Touton, and others.
“Their mixed actions should not solely serving to deliver change to the cocoa sector, however they’re additionally serving to Ghana meet its nationwide emissions reductions commitments beneath the Paris Agreement.
This stage of collaboration can be mirrored within the profit sharing plan underpinning Ghana’s’ ERPA with the World Bank,” the assertion added.
The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) is a worldwide halfnership of governments, enterprisees, civil society, and Indigenous Peoples’ organisations targeted on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, forest carbon inventory conservation, the sustainable administration of forests, and the enhancement of forest carbon shares in creating international locations, actions generally known as REDD+.
Launched in 2008 the FCPF has labored with 47 creating countries throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, together with 17 donors which have made contributions and commitments totaling $1.3 billion.
BY CLAUDE NYARKO ADAMS
Source: www.ghanaiantimes.com.gh
