A stakeholders forum on Forest Management Planning opened yesterday at the University of Ghana, Legon, in Accra.

The objective of the two-day forum is to provide an opportunity for the stakeholders including timber dealers forest conservationists and non-governmental organisationas to discuss with the Forestry Commission modalities for a comprehensive Timber Utilisation Contract (TUC) area plan development and identify ways of enhancing sustainable forest management in Ghana.

It was organised by the Forestry Commission (FC) with sponsorship from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Addressing the forum, the Chief Executive Officer of the Forestry Commission, Prof Nii Ashie-Kotey, said Ghana adopted forest management certification as a tool for achieving sustainable forest management in June 1996.

Prof Ashie-Kotey said it, however became apparent that, practical forest management in Ghana was below the required standards because the capacity, knowledge and understanding of the workings of forest certification and management was low in Ghana.

In order to provide technical guidance in that regard, the WWF extended its Global Forest and Trade Network (GFTN) programme to Ghana in 2004.

"Four years of GFTN activities in Ghana have enhanced the capacity of a number of concession holders in the area of certification and improved forest management in their respective concessions," he said.

Prof. Ashie-Kotey said this was achieved through training, capacity-building programmes on reduced impact logging, certification and auditing.

Prof. Ashie-Kotey said inspite of these major achievements, one key impediment that remains to be resolved is the inadequacy or the non-existence of forest management plans. This has necessitated the stakeholders forum.

Mr Mustapha Seidu, Projects Leader of WWF – West Africa Forest programme office in a presentation, said GFTN is a WWF initiative to eliminate illegal logging, transform global market place into a force for saving valuable and threatened forest and facilitate trade links between companies committed to achieving responsible forest management.

He said GFTN operates in 34 countries, working with over 360 companies, trade in more than 42 billion US dollars of forest products annually and manage 26.1 million hectares of forest worldwide.

Mr Seidu mentioned key forest management achievement in Ghana by GFTN as progressive paradigm shift in the management of forest purposely for timber to a more exclusive ecosystem.

Other achievements are the slow but progressive openness to collaborative forest management, and commitment to international initiatives on forest management and trade in forest products.

Illegal chainsaw operations, non development of Timber Utilisation Contract (TUC) area plans, and non conformity to leases of forestry laws and regulations, as some of the problems the GFTN faces in Ghana.

Source: Francis Xah - The Ghanaian Times