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The Nature Conservation Research Center, with the support of the Netherlands National Committee (IUCN) within the framework of the Green Landscape Alliance, the World Cocoa Foundation and USAID, has initiated a guidance document on Approaches to the Cocoa Landscape in Ghana.
Basically this seeks to provide sustainable means to make Ghana’s cocoa sector environmentally safe and compliant.
In launching the Guidance Document and Toolkit, the Deputy General Director of Operations for Ghana’s Cocoa Regulator COCOBOD, Dr. Emmanuel Opoku stated that his team has invested heavily in climate compliance tools for cocoa farmers.
“Ghana COCOBOD has invested heavily to ensure that farmers are resilient to climate change. We have achieved this by increasing the income of farmers and modernizing cocoa production in a manner consistent with protecting the environment. As a corporate entity, efforts have been made to ensure smart cocoa cultivation, including the forest development program that protects the forest from greenhouses, ”he stated.
Meanwhile, NCRC Director of Programs and Research, Dr. Rebecca Ashley Asare, outlined the various multi-stakeholder agreements that Ghana has reached to ensure a safe climate in the cocoa sector.
“After the last 20 years of predominantly agricultural activity, we have not been able to address environmental problems in a sustainable way. What has been recommended in Ghana are multi-stakeholder landscape approaches that include governance, realization of spatial objectives and based on that, receiving results-based payments, ”he said.
Ghana and its cocoa sector are already world leaders in the design and testing of landscape approaches, including landscape governance mechanisms, standards and monitoring systems.
This comes from more than 20 years of experience in the development and implementation of the Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) mechanism.
