Rainforest Forest Alliance, a non -government organisation with support from RICK STEVES’ Europe project, have trained and empowered cocoa farmers to monitor the survival and growth rates of trees planted under the green Ghana project.
Mr. Emmanuel Bawuah Antwi, Project Coordinator and Senior Associate at Rainforests Alliance, at a stakeholder engagement in Wiawso, said enumerator farmers were given 32 Samsung tablets to enhance their monitoring roles.
He said with support from Rick Steve’s Europe, the climate Smart Cocoa in Ghana Project, in collaboration with Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs), Forestry Commission, the Cocoa Health and Extension Division of the Ghana Cocoa Board within the Western North Region have in the past three years provided over 270,000 economic tree seedlings for planting by Rainforest Alliance Project farmers.
Mr. Antwi said the project had also contributed immensely to building the capacities of the Community Led Governance and Natural Resources Management Structure (the landscape management board) as well as monitoring the growth rate of planted trees and climate-smart agriculture (CSA) training programmes.
He explained that the successful implementation of the project would help increase the flora and fauna and improve the air quality in the cocoa and forest landscape in the Region.
Mr. Antwi reiterated that the initiative was expected to increase cocoa farms resilience against climate change thereby providing access to plant medicines and food sources.
Mr. Alvin Adu Asare, Senior Associate, Geographical Information systems (GIS) in charge of monitoring and evaluation at Rainforest Alliance, said it was important to track tree survival rates to measure progress.
“We have built the capacity of community lead farmers through the use of Hybrid Community-Based Monitoring system applications, which will enable communities to own and effectively perform monitoring and evaluation tasks to ensure the sustainability of various interventions implemented”
Mr. Asare emphasized that the tablets and other equipment provided would be used to monitor the survival and growth rate and collect the geo-locations of the trees.
That he explained, would enable relevant stakeholders to gather reliable data, analyze and share with relevant authorities for informed decision making by the Local Government and Landscape Management Board.
By Alex Baah Boadi
