The King of Dagbon, Ya Na Abukari II, has cautioned the people of Dagbon against the cutting down of economic trees for charcoal.
According to the king, deforestation has been a major challenge to the kingdom due to common practices such as bush burning, charcoal burning, farming and logging.
“These practices have led to serious destruction of the forest in the kingdom, which needs urgent steps to restore, and to achieve the goal of protecting our forest and ecosystem, we need to plant trees,” he said.
In addressing the devastating effects of charcoal burning for instance, the Dagbon Overlord proposed that government should beyond planting trees, subsidise the cost of LPG, as an alternative to charcoal use.
“We can also plant fast growing species of trees for the purpose of charcoal burning like other countries do,” he added.
Ya Na Abukari II, who was speaking during the national tree planting exercise, pledged the commitment of sub-chiefs to fight deforestation.
He commended government for coming out with the Green Ghana Project initiative aimed at restoring the forest, adding “this initiative can be viewed as bringing more life to our people as there will be abundant oxygen in the atmosphere when the initiative is finally executed.”
Ya Na Abukari II announced that the Gbewa Palace in the coming days would launch a project aimed at planting trees along all major entry points of 60 communities across the administrative assemblies in the Dagbon Kingdom.
About 250,000 trees are expected to be planted across the Northern Region in the Green Ghana Project initiative.
The Deputy Minister-designate for Lands and Natural Resources, George Mireku Duker, who graced the occasion, thanked the Overlord of Dagbon and his elders for coming out to support the initiative aimed at fighting deforestation that has affected 8 million hectares of forest zone.
“We now have less than 1 million of our forest zone being in good shape and that is worrying enough and that is why President Akufo-Addo has seen the need to for us to go into tree planting,” he said.
FROM Eric Kombat, Yendi