Mr Marizuk Sidik, a youth leader and community development activist, has called for public ownership of the tree planted under the government's tree planting initiative, dubbed the "Green Ghana Project."
He said the public should not see the tree-planting exercise as the sole responsibility of the government but as a collective duty of all citizens.
Mr Sidik said this in an interview with Info Radio on the occasion of 2024 Green Ghana Day, on which the government was set to plant 10 million seedlings of species of trees.
The 2024 Green Ghana Day, marked under the theme "Growing for a Greener Tomorrow," is the fourth edition of the climate change mitigation action since its inception in 2021.
"It's important to recognize that the tree planting exercise is not solely for the government; who is the government, It's all of us. So we must embrace the exercise as ours," Mr Sidik said.
He indicated that the saying "when the last three die, the last man dies" was enough reason for every person to be concerned about the lives of trees and not cut them down needlessly.
"Sometimes, I imagine how long it takes a tree to live—so many years—and just how many minutes it takes to cut it down," he wondered.
Mr Sidik said trees are a lifeline, serving numerous benefits, including windbreaks, "for which reason alone, I don't think anyone should fell a tree in the backyard."
He, thus, lauded the government for instituting such an initiative to plant more trees to aid in the restoration of the country's vegetative cover, improve environmental health, and mitigate the debilitating effects of climate change.
He, however, admonished that the trees should not always just be planted, but that they should be looked after properly to ensure they grow into maturity.
He also impressed upon the government to facilitate alternative ways of accessing fuel for the mass of Ghanaians to reduce the rate of felling trees for firewood and charcoal.
He said the government should subsidize the cost of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to make it affordable and discourage tree felling.
"Even though it [LPG] has its cons too, but it's friendlier to the environment since it involves no tree cutting and less smoke generation," he said.
The government of Ghana established Green Ghana Day to lessen the adverse effects of climate change and revitalize the nation's degraded landscapes.
Over the last three years, the country has planted over 41 million trees, out of which 30 million have survived, according to the Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Samuel Abu Jinapor, when he addressed a news briefing in Accra on Tuesday (5 June) ahead of the Green Ghana Day.
Comments