The focus of the 2024 World Environment Day was on “land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience,” with the slogan: “Our Land, Our Future. We are #GenerationRestoration.” This year’s celebration was the 52nd since the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment was held in 1972 in Sweden.
The celebration was also a collective call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, which is critical to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). World Environment Day 2024 happened at a time, when the world’s ecosystems are being ravaged at an alarming rate with billions of hectares of land degraded. This is said to be affecting almost half of the global population and thereby threatening half of global GDP. Rural communities, small holder farmers and the extremely poor are the hardest hit.
The concern of UNEP’s Chief
The Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Ms. Inger Andersen, described the situation as a period when the world was facing “a worrying intensification of the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature and biodiversity loss and crisis of pollution and waste.”
In a press statement issued on Tuesday, June 4 ahead of the international celebration of the Day, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Ms. Inger emphasised that land restoration could reverse the creeping tide of land degradation, drought and desertification. “Every dollar invested in restoration can enhance ecosystem services,” she said, adding, “Restoration is crucial because it boosts livelihoods, lowers poverty and builds resilience to extreme weather. It also increases carbon storage and slows climate change.”
Land restoration refers to the process of halting degradation or rehabilitating degraded land, typically through activities like reforestation, soil conservation, and the protection of natural processes. It aims to enhance biodiversity, restore ecosystem services, and mitigate climate change impacts.
The NDCs and status of some national restoration efforts
Currently, nations including Ghana are working hard to implement their defined climate actions geared towards comprehensive green growth and improved resilience of infrastructure and services. These are known as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Climate Agreement of December 2015.
Subsequently, nations were expected to revise their NDCs to make them more action and results oriented. In 2020, Ghana’s NDCs were updated under the leadership of the Acting Director of the Climate Change Unit of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Dr. Daniel Benefo, and his team of experts.
According to Dr. Benefo, with the updated NDC, Ghana is implementing nine unconditional actions that would result in 64 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions (MtCO2e) reductions by 2030. The actions include activities in the agricultural and forestry sub-sectors.
“Therefore, the country needs to invest in green technology to create jobs, boost economic growth and cut emissions to contribute to addressing global warming,” he said in a telephone interview.
These efforts, in a way, will also prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems, which is the agenda of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, launched in July 2021 to end in 2030. Obviously, there has never been a more appropriate time to revive damaged ecosystems than now. It can help to end poverty, combat climate change, and prevent a mass extinction.
It is worthy of note that in addressing ecosystem degradation, land degradation is addressed simultaneously. Actually, the two go hand in hand and so is referred to as landscape restoration, since forests, wildlife, water bodies and the activities that go on in and round them are all on land. In the light of this, some commendable efforts by government and civil society to improve the health of the landscape are worthy of mention.
These include the Ghana REDD+ Strategy 2016-2035, which is meant to serve as a guide and framework for pursuing a broad set of actions to tackle deforestation and forest degradation at the landscape level. Though its activities, Ghana has become the second African country to receive payments from a World Bank Trust Fund for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. The World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) paid Ghana $4,862,280 million for reducing 972,456 tons of carbon emissions for the first monitoring period under the programme from June to December 2019.
The country is eligible to receive up to $50 million for 10 million tons of carbon emissions reduced by the end of 2024. However, some concerned individuals are of the view that, unless drastic measures are put in place to check the onslaught of illegal mining in particular, the country will be doomed come the end of this year.
Then, there is the Northern Restoration Initiative by civil society in collaboration with public institutions. It seeks to effectively increase tree cover, restore land health and community resilience in Northern Ghana. The status of this initiative is yet to be ascertained.
Legislation wise, the Lands Commission Act 2008, (Act 767), the Land Use and Spatial Planning Act 2016 (Act 925) and the Lands Act 2020 (Act 1036) have provisions that are intended to promote the judicious use of land by the society, and ensure that land use is in accordance with sustainable management principles and the maintenance of a sound eco-system.
The provisions are excellent and ongoing implementation would eventually result in a sector wide turnaround that will impact positively on all the other sectors of the nation’s economy. But challenges including indiscipline in both the traditional and formal set ups, are impeding progress.
Some commemorative declarations
Still on the 2024 World Environment Day, Sunita Narain of the India based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) saw this year’s celebration as a reminder that “in this age of climate, risk needs a new narrative”, because as extreme weather events batter nations, they have huge implications for development programmes and place additional strain on government resources.
An example is the displacement of over 40,000 residents around the lower parts of the Volta Region, portions of Eastern and Greater Accra Regions following last year’s spillage of the Akosombo Dam in Ghana. The dam had accumulated huge volumes of water due to heavy rains necessitating the spillage. Homes were submerged, livelihoods disappeared and damaged property run into millions of cedis. While the floods generally affected all populations, children and women were impacted the most.
Ms. Narain specifically charged the next Indian government to recognize that the imperative of development is about scale, speed and imagination, which takes into account the need to do development differently. “In my view… the government needs to rework and re-engineer development so that it is inclusive, affordable and sustainable.”
Her call is applicable to governments of all developing nations and requires reimagining the way work is done in every sphere from the supply of clean water, to access to energy that is clean and affordable.
“This,” Ms..Narian noted, “will require changes in design and then in delivery. We need a new development paradigm that can work for the Planet and for every last person. This, then, is where we need the focus and attention of the new or old-new government.”
Meanwhile, to commemorate the day, the Strategic Youth Network for Development (SYND) has declared its dedication to restoring the planet through initiatives like the “Ensonyameye Forest Restoration Project” at Ada Wasakuse. In a telephone interview, SYND’s Vice Executive Coordinator, Solomon Yamoah, appealed to all partners and stakeholders “to work together to create a sustainable future and a healthy environment for all.”
By Ama Kudom-Agyemang
