Mole National Park; Stakeholders Dialogue On A Tool for Improved Landscape Management strategies And Decision Making

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A Land Use Dialogue to facilitate and improve natural resources utilization and management decision making has been organized at the Mole National Park.

The dialogue which was organized by A Rocha Ghana in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN Ghana), and The Forest Dialogue (TFD) under the “Stabilizing Land Use Project (PLUS)” sought to develop integrated and participatory landscape management strategies through engaging private and public stakeholders for sustainable utilization and management of resources in the landscape.

At the dialogue the National Director of A Rocha GHANA, Dr. Seth Ken Appiah-Kubi, in his opening remarks indicated that the landscape is endowed with lots of natural resources. He however unequivocally lamented about the rate at which these resources are depleting due to many unregulated and unsustainable activities like illegal logging, charcoal production, and unsustainable farming activities among others. He said “although people’s livelihoods are tied to these very activities; we are all thriving on the resources given to us by God, therefore there is the urgent need for us to consciously plan to use these resources in such a manner that, it does not serve us only today, but tomorrow as well as serving our future generation”.

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Dr. Appiah-Kubi was optimistic that the Wildlife bill when passed will give the legal backing to CREMAs to protect their own lands aside the protected lands with a legal support. He therefore appealed to parliament to speed up the process since it is very important to all. He finally advised the participants to strengthen the synergy to ensure right land use decisions for sustainable landscape development.

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The District Chief Executive for West Gonja District, Hon. Saeed Muhazu Jibril took his turn to welcome the participants. He equally acknowledged the rich landscape resources and bemoaned the fastest rate at which these resources are depleting. He commended A Rocha Ghana and its partners for the consistent engagement in the landscape to secure the resources. He reiterated the district assemblies’ commitment towards sustainable natural resources in the landscape stating that the assemblies fully support all decisions by the central government to protect the landscape and also support the tradition council decisions to sustain the ban on logging, transportation and export of rosewood in Gonjaland.

Activities undertaken during the three-day dialogue involved presentation of baseline study findings, Landscape Visioning by stakeholder groups, safari in Mole National Park and Park Management Discussion, study visits to Murugu and Mognori CREMAs, identification and Prioritization of Natural Resource Management issues and development of landscape management strategy. During the dialogue participants had series of breakout sessions to deliberate on issues encompassing landscape baselines and current challenges as well as reflections on the field visits. Participants were also tasked to establish landscape visions and actions for a sustainable landscape in the next 10 years. During these sessions each stakeholder group was requested to identify a vision and recommend a vision statement depicting their objectives for the landscape. The assigned stakeholder groups were Government, Private sector, local community, CSOs and Traditional Authorities.

Mainstreaming Gender into Landscape Resource Management
Issues of mainstreaming Gender into successful landscape management were fully captured. It was brought to light that gender equity and inclusion is an important component of successful landscape management hence there should be involvement and representation of all gender at all levels of landscape management. It was suggested that women and the youth should be empowered to become economically independent and take up leadership positions. Stakeholders were therefore admonished to promote enforcement of gender responsive policies and encourage men to share properties equitably among all gender including women, men and youth.

Landscape management strategy
Stakeholders after the dialogue agreed on magnificent strategy which proposed that;

 Traditional authorities should be empowered to enhance management of the landscape guided by their world view and culture
 A well-coordinated natural resource management mechanism delivers desirable conservation and livelihood outcomes for current and future generations
 A prosperous private sector supports sustainable livelihoods by generating reliable and profitable markets for producers within a peaceful secured and enabling environment.
 An Integrated and sustainably managed landscape enhances ecosystem services, and environmental and climate justice.

Shared vision
On the whole, stakeholders’ inputs and submissions were completely harnessed and this led to the development of a composite landscape vision as: A resilient landscape supporting sustainable livelihoods and biodiversity.

Land Use Dialogue is a global initiative coordinated by The Forest Dialogue secretariat and steering committee members in collaboration with local and global partners and it maps applies and evaluate the practical landscape approach to provide tangible improvement on the ground.

The landscape approach is a conceptual framework that seeks to develop an integrated and a holistic view of the landscape, balancing multiple objectives through engaging private and public stakeholders. The approach is necessitated with the idea of clarifying decision making around land use decisions and enhance the integration of climate-smart agriculture practices and agroforestry which promote environmental conservation, curbing down illegal resources exploitation, sustainability of production value chains and sustainable development as a whole.
The conference brought together people from all works of life comprising National and the International world.

The dialogue which took place from the 14th -16th May, 2019 was used as a platform to provide input into a Landscape Management Strategy to engage newly created Regional Coordinating Council and District Assemblies to fully integrate and provide support for community-based natural resource management was attended by over 80 participants drawn from various state institutions, NGOs, Community Resources Management Areas (CREMAS), Traditional Authorities, Academia, Private sector, international community across the landscape and the world.

By: Radio1News|Ghana