The implementation of the Landscapes and Environmental Agility across the Nation (LEAN) project is contributing to conserving biodiversity and improving livelihoods of some local communities in the Savannah, Transition and Forest belts.
The European Union (EU) sponsored project is helping smallholder farmers and communities to restore vegetative cover, forest reserves and degraded landscapes while offering alternatives livelihoods to residents.
This came to light when the implementing partners namely the Rainforest Alliance, World Vision Ghana, Tropenbos Ghana and EcoCare Ghana and other stakeholders paid a verification visit to the project communities in the Kassena-Nankana West of the Upper East Region.
The visit was part of efforts to allow the stakeholders have first-hand information about the impact of the project on the beneficiaries, confirm or otherwise report on the project, learn successes and the challenges to inform future planning and implementation.
The EU LEAN project is a four-year initiative aimed at supporting national and local efforts to conserve biodiversity, improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, building climate resilience, and reducing emissions from land-use changes across Ghana’s high forest, savannah, and transition zones.
The beneficiaries explained that the project was restoring their degraded lands, increasing food production, and impacting their lives positively.
Mr Frederick Wugaa Awovire, a beneficiary from the Navio community said apart from the project helping them to restore degraded landscapes through the Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) and adopt sustainable agriculture practices through organic farming, it had also provided them with economic independence through the introduction of the alternative livelihood’s interventions.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the visit, Madam Abena Dufie Woode, the Consortium Lead and Senior Project Manager for the EU LEAN project, Rainforest Alliance, expressed satisfaction that the project which was expected to end by the end of 2024, was contributing to environmental and natural resources management and building rural communities’ resilience against climate change.
She said through the project, two landscape management boards had been established in the Savannah landscape alone and their capacity built to ensure that they led landscape restoration and natural resources management and protection.
“We have been able to set up eight nurseries that have minimum capacity of about 10,000 seedlings and together on the project we have raised and distributed over 700,000 of seedlings of both native and exotic species some of which have been shared for restoration purposes,” she added.
Apart from the restoration component, she said the project had diversified and provided economic empowerment to smallholder farmers through alternative livelihoods initiatives and over 500 rural farmers have been trained and majority established in beekeeping, aquaculture, vegetables, and small ruminant farming.
Through World Vision Ghana, the project has also introduced smallholder farmers to the Village Savings and Loans Scheme, which was encouraging savings culture among the rural folks and providing them with financial assistance.
Mr Joseph Edwin Yelkabong, the EU LEAN Project Officer, World Vision Ghana, said apart from the fact that the project had helped to establish governance structures which were helping to protect the environment, it had contributed to restore several hectares of land through the FMNR concept.
“At World Vision, we seek to ensure that children experience life to its fullest and so the different project areas and the interventions including the livelihoods ones are supporting vulnerable families, and that will transcend to supporting the children in the families,” he added.
GNA
