Ghana to utilize South Korea’s experience to ensure sustainable forest management

South Korea has extended technical cooperation-support to Ghana in addressing the challenge of deforestation and forest degradation. The stakeholders in the forest sector met in Ghana’s capital Accra on March 11 to discuss how the country can tap South Korea’s experience to ensure sustainable forest management.

Facilitated by the United Nations Development Programme, the one-year pilot cooperation will focus on wildfire management and the creation of awareness of the need to protect forests and the planting of trees. The triangular cooperation dubbed ‘Development solutions: Partnerships on sustainable forest’ will see Ghana benefiting from $70,000 from the government of South Korea, while Ghana will source additional funding from other areas, as reported by Graphic Online.

The Assistant Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme, Louis Kuukpen opined that statistics available indicated that Ghana’s forests had seen significant deterioration since the turn of the century.

The country is said to have lost an average of 125,400 hectares representing 1.68 per cent of forest cover per year. Since then the deforestation rate had been about two per cent per year, representing a loss of 65,000 hectares of closed forest per year.

Sharing South Korea’s experience in sustainable forest management, an expert on forestry at the Korea University, Professor Yowhan Son said South Korea had made significant progress in sustainable forestry management, accumulating substantial wealth of knowledge. Son joined the meeting via a video conference. He further expressed optimism stating that the Korean experience would be applicable in Ghana and bring positive feedback soon.

Also Read: Ghana: VGA to build military veteran centers consisting of wellness, restaurants, many more