Summit participants call for resources to sustain ENR sector

The Annual Review Summit of the Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) sector ended at Elmina on Thursday with a call for a broad stakeholder participation in the sector to enhance the sustainability and growth of the sector.

The summit, which brought together ENR stakeholders including government representatives, civil society, traditional authorities, private sector as well as development partners, was under the theme “sustainable management of Natural Resources and the Environment for People.”

In a communiqué the participants said the Forestry Commission would create an enabling environment to attract domestic and international investment into plantation development, value added processing and eco-tourism such as the implementation of the Achimota Eco-pack Project.

The Commission would also implement a policy on the domestic and timber procurement as well as promote value addition including rubber wood development of the domestic market and develop 10,000 hectares of plantation nationwide.

On the mining sector the participants said the sector would continue to promote the sustainable management of Ghana’s mineral resources through collaboration with all stakeholders so as to develop and implement a framework to improve small scale mining.

Also, the mining sector would promote investment in the production of salt and the base metals to increase diversification of the mineral production base as well improve the local content in the mining industry.

This will be done by ensuring the implementation of corporate social responsibility guidelines to prevent lopsided development in mining communities.

On the environment they stated the training of 30 more prosecutors and the trial of 15 environmental cases and that two new field offices would be established in the Northern Region to enhance closer collaboration with civil society organizations.

Source: GNA