Climate Change & Energy
Green Ghana: Survival rates of trees decreasing- Minister
Source: Ghenvironment.com - April 26, 2023
Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo plants a tree seedling to mark the 2022 Green Ghana Day in Accra. (Image: Ghana Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources)
The government is targeting to plant about ten million trees this year, which represents a reduction from last year’s twenty million planted.
Launching this year’s Green Ghana Project, the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Samuel Abu Jinapor says several factors accounted for the government’s failure to meet last year’s target.
“We have 72 percent of survival rate last year as compared to 82 percent in 2021, while adequate measures were put in place to ensure the survival of all trees planted, a number of external factors accounted for the survival rate including rainfall patterns, wildfires and soil fertility”.
Celebrated on the theme, ‘Our Forests, Our Health,’ Mr Jinapor says the reduction in the number of trees to be planted at this year’s Green Ghana Day will help create ample time for the nurturing of the already planted trees to enhance the survival rate.
“The survival rate shows that we still have some 23 million trees to nurture. It is for this reason that this year, the government has decided to revise our target downwards to 10 million trees to give us some devoted resources and attention to the trees planted over the last two years while not wasting momentum on our quest to restore our degraded landscape.”
He, therefore, appealed to the general public to support this year’s Green Ghana project.