Project Leader: P. P. Bosu

Background

Forest plantation development efforts in Ghana are unacceptably skewed towards the planting of exotic monoculture teak plantations. This is in spite of the high diversity of indigenous species available for plantation development. The preference for teak can be attributed to its fast growing, pest resilience, and fire tolerance characteristics compared with many indigenous species. Teak plantations, however, do not provide for the multitude of other non-timber products that can be provided by natural forests or indigenous species plantations capable of sustaining ecological diversity as well as providing communities with sustainable livelihoods. This project started in 2005.

Client: DFID

Project team: Dr. D. Sekyere, J. Degraft Yartey & N. S. A. Derkyi

Background

Research in Ghana has shown that conversion of cassava into products for food, plywood, paperboard, textile and pharmaceutical industries contributes significantly to rural livelihood. Innovative public-private sector partnerships were used to establish a market chain from producer to end-user, and an institutional framework to support market development and manage uptake of knowledge.

Client: ITTO/Government of Ghana

Duration: 2009-2013

Project Team Leader: Dr. Dominic Blay

Background

The Ankasa Conservation Area, which incorporates the Nini-Suhien National Park and the Ankasa Resource Reserve, is considered the most biologically diverse forest ecosystem in Ghana. However, due to encroachment by local communities for unsustainable shifting cultivation and illegal logging in and around the area, the conservation area is being overexploited resulting in deforestation and degradation. This leads to poverty-forest resource depletion cycle and decreased quality of environmental services including increased emission of greenhouse gases. Hence this project aims to contribute to sustainable management and conservation of Ankasa Conservation area to improve the provision of environmental services and reduce GHG emissions.

The specific objective is to develop and implement participatory, good governance and management system for the Ankasa conservation area, determine the financial value of the environmental services as well as methods for measurement, assessment, reporting and verification (MARV) for forest carbon.

The output of the project will be:

• a developed participatory management system;
  provision of financial value of the environmental services by the conservation area;
• good governance mechanisms and benefit sharing arrangements;
• a well developed participatory method for measurement, assessment reporting and verification (MARV) for forest carbon.

The project is participatory and thus builds on a high level of community involvement and capacity building and this will ensure sustainability of the project.

Client: ITTO

Project Duration: 2008-2012

Project Team Leader: Dr. E. Owusu-Sekyere

Background

Over 60 per cent of the population in Ghana depends on plant parts for health delivery. This is because medicinal plants are of critical importance in poor communities where even relatively cheap western medicines remain prohibitively expensive. The continued availability of many of these plants is in jeopardy. A workshop organized to solicit views on the state of medicinal plants in Ghana revealed that in several forest fringe communities, the loss of medicinal plants means not only an immediate loss of livelihood but also rapid erosion on the knowledge and efficacy of their use. Again, there is no attempt whatsoever to conserve the medicinal plants as both timber and the non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Therefore, habitat destruction and overexploitation means sources of medicinal plants are becoming increasingly scarce. In recent times, herbalists and collectors travel long hours over long distances in search for specific medicinal plants. Sometimes they travel to other ecological areas for their suitable plant species.

Client: ITTO/PROTA Foundation

Duration: 2009-2012

Project Team Leader: Dr. J.R. Cobbinah

Background

As part of a programme to improve access to information on the 8000 useful plants of Tropical Africa and to promote their use in a sustainable manner, Plant Resources of Tropical Africa (PROTA) is synthesizing all existing but dispersed knowledge on the estimated 1070 Timbers of Tropical Africa. This second part of the project started in January 2009.

Project Team Leader: Dr. D. A. Ofori

Background

Allanblackia parviflora, is a multipurpose indigenous fruit tree species that could be used in agroforestry systems with both environmental and economic benefits. The seed oil is of prime importance as a foreign exchange earner and is being developed as a rural based enterprise in many African countries notably Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Tanzania. The seed oil is in high demand by Unilever for its food products and cosmetics. Currently, the supply of seeds from the wild is 5per cent of the demand. There is therefore a need to domesticate Allanblackia to sustain the supply of Allanblackia seeds to feed both the local and foreign markets. Partners of Novella Africa are therefore encouraging the cultivation of the species for a sustainable supply of seed oil for the manufacturing of products such as soap, margarine etc.