Youth calls for public owning of Green Ghana Project trees

Mr. Marizuk Sidik, a youth leader and community development activist, has called for public owning of the tree planted under the government's tree planting initiative dubbed "Green Ghana Project."

He said the public should not see the tree planting exercise as the sole responsibility of the government but as a collective duty by all citizens.

Mr. Sidik said this in an interview with Info Radio on the occasion of the 2024 Green Ghana Day in which the government was set to plant 10 million seedlings of species of trees.

The 2024 Green Ghana Day, marked under the theme "Growing for a greener tomorrow" is the fourth edition of the climate change mitigation action since its inception in 2021.

"It's important to recognize that the tree planting exercise is not solely for the government, but who is the government, it's all of us. So we must embrace the exercise as ours," Mr. Sidik said.

He indicated that the saying "when the last three dies, the last man dies" was enough reason for every person to be concerned about the lives of trees and not cut them down needlessly.

"Sometimes, I imagine how long it takes a tree to live, so many years, and just how many minutes one takes to cut it down," he wondered.

Mr. Sidik said trees are a lifeline, serving numerous benefits including windbreaks "for which reason alone, I don't think anyone should fell a tree at the backyard."

He, thus, lauded the government for instituting such an initiative to plant more trees to aid in the restoration of the country's vegetative cover, improve environmental health, and mitigate the debilitating effects of climate change.

He, however, admonished that the trees should not always just be planted, but that they should be looked after properly to ensure they grow into maturity.

He also impressed upon the government to facilitate alternative ways of access to fuel to the mass of Ghanaians to reduce the rate of felling trees for firewood and charcoal.

He said the government should subsidise the cost of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to make it affordable to discourage tree felling.

"Even though it [LPG] has its cons too, but it's friendlier to the environment since it involves no tree cutting and less smoke generation," he said.

The Green Ghana Day has been instituted by government as part of measures to mitigate the negative effects of climate change and restore degraded landscapes across the country.

Over the last three years, the country planted over 41 million trees out which 30 million had survived according to the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Samuel Abu Jinapor, when he addressed a news briefing in Accra on Tuesday (5 June) ahead of the Green Ghana Day (June 7).