Kasa Initiative Ghana, in collaboration with Care International, has held a two-day workshop to empower Northern-based Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in assessing and reporting on Green Climate Fund (GCF) projects.
The workshop held at Tamale between August 22nd – 23rd, 2022 was part of the second phase of a Green Climate Fund readiness project in Ghana (2021-2022) funded by Care Germany and facilitated by the Germanwatch.
Coordinator of Kasa Initiative Ghana, Mr. Jonathan Gokah in his address to participants, asserted the need to “hold project implementers accountable” as this will ensure transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness of the goals assigned to the project.
“This workshop is to build CSOs capacity to independently monitor or follow the implementation of the GSELRP project otherwise when we leave it with the government alone, they do whatever they like and go away. If we don’t build our capacity to understand the process and ask questions, the project will end and we will have nothing on the ground. Sadly, we will not have the capacity to probe,” he said.
The workshop focused on the Ghana Shea Landscape Emission Reductions Project (GSLERP) which is a seven-year program aimed at tackling deforestation and boosting sustainable economic activities associated with shea trees, among other economic trees.
The Head of Programs at Care International Ghana, Mr. Zakaria Yakubu, called on CSOs to be well-informed of the program to prevent lapses in their monitoring and evaluating role, as stated in the GCF-funded projects.
He explained that: “We want to appraise ourselves about what the GSLERP is about in Northern Ghana, what’s happening on the ground and what role we can play based on the knowledge gained from the advocacy on the GSLERP”.
The workshop hosted other facilitators, such as the Executive Director of Community Development Alliance, Mr. Kanton Salifu Issifu, and officials from the Forestry Commission.
About Ghana Shea Landscape Emission Reductions Project (GSLERP)
The Ghana Shea Landscape Emission Reductions Project (GSLERP) is a seven-year program launched in Tamale on February 14, 2022, to tackle deforestation and boost sustainable economic activities associated with shea trees.
The project, developed by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources through the Forestry Commission, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Global Shea Alliance has a budget of $54.5 million.
Green Climate Fund (GCF) provides a grant of $30.1 million while the government and the private sector are co-financing with $24.4 million.
GSLERP estimates that 70 community nurseries will be raised and managed by 26 women cooperatives. About 1.75 million shea seedlings and 480,000 other economic trees will be planted on 500,000 hectares of land.
This adds to Ghana’s fight to mitigate the effect of climate change on the ecosystem in the Northern-Savannah ecological zone.
