Communications Ministry to participate in Green Ghana Project

The Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful will on June 10, 2022 lead staff of the Ministry and its Agencies to plant trees as part of the 20 million tree seedlings planting initiative under the Green Ghana Project.

The 2022 edition of the Green Ghana Day was launched on 1st March, 2022 by President Akufo-Addo under the theme ‘’Mobilizing for a Greener Future’’ with a target to plant at least 20 million tree seedlings on the 2022 Green Ghana Day-10th June 2022.

”The fight against climate change must be a fight against deforestation and forest degradation. Even though we in Africa are the least contributors to climate change, with Africa contributing 4% of global emissions, we are determined to do our part to combat it.”

“It is for this reason we launched the Green Ghana Project last year as part of an aggressive afforestation and reforestation programme. With your support and enthusiasm, we exceeded our target of 5 million to 7 million trees on the maiden launch. This encouraged us to even do more. I am informed that all these trees are doing well.”

“We have increased the target this year to at least 20 million trees. This would mean mobilizing the entire population to ensure that each Ghanaian and each foreigner resident in Ghana plants at least one tree.”

He entreated everyone to get involved in the fight against climate change.

The Green Ghana Project is aimed at planting hard wood, which could be used for timber in 10-20 years. It is expected that this exercise will improve the vegetation and forest cover as over 80 percent of this cover has been destroyed by human activity, the minister said at last year’s tree planting exercise.

Some agencies to partake in the exercise include; Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC), National Cybersecurity Authority, National Information Technology Agency (NITA), Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence (KACE), Ghana Domain Name Registry, National Communication Authority (NCA), Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMeT), Ghana Post Company Limited and Postal and Courier Regulatory Commission.

The Ministry will plant orange trees, decorative palm trees, coconut trees, mango trees, pawpaw trees and more at its enclave as well as other premises of the various  agencies.

The initiative forms part of the efforts by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources (MLNR) and the Forestry Commission to encourage Ghanaians to plant more trees to preserve and protect the country’s forest cover and the environment in general.

Target

Government made it known during the launch of its readiness to plant 20 million trees this year to restore the country’s vegetation.

The Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources in charge of Forestry, Mr Benito Owusu-Bio, who made this known, said preparatory work, including funding sources, had been made to achieve the target.

He said the ministry, which spearheaded the Green Ghana project has drawn useful lessons from previous exercise to help in scaling up the initiative.

Mr Owusu-Bio was speaking at the inauguration of the management board of the Forest Plantation Development Fund (FPDF) in Accra last year.