Historical Odyssey 6: Jeopardizing Our Natural Resources.

Historical Odyssey 6 focus is on policies relating to forest reserves, mining and agricultural lands as they affect our national interests. How are we tending the rich natural resources we have been endowed with? Historical Odyssey 1 through 5 implores our policy makers to move away from the colonial legacy or curse of a Ghana as a mere producer of export crop. The non-use of arable land to produce enough domestic food is at the crux of our argument. The failure to effectively deal with Land Reform is at the core of a serious problem, quite apart from the greed of politicians coupled with their lack of vision.

In America, regimes come every four years but America maintains the mantra: WE HAVE PERMANENT INTERESTS. WE DON?T HAVE PERMANENT ENEMIES, which means it has no permanent friends or political allies either. Witness how the French who helped America win its colonial war of independence against Britain became a pariah nation over disagreements on the Iraq War. That basic lesson has eluded Ghanaian regimes with disastrous results. Successive Ghanaian regimes assume antagonistic positions to those they succeed and jettison Ghana?s Interests in the guise of charting new direction with new policies.

Ghana?s national interest should be analogous to what America calls ?permanent interest?. Do we recognize what our national interests are? The news that three NATIONAL PARKS have been earmarked for privatization is indeed strange. According to GNA, ?on Feb. 25, 2006, Professor Dominic Fobih, Minister of Lands, Forestry and Mines, announced that three national parks have been earmarked for privatization in the country. They are the Kakum National Park in t! he Central Region, Mole National Park in the Northern Region and the Shai Hills in the Greater Accra Region. Professor Fobi said a Dutch company from Tanzania had already made a good offer in respect of the Kakum Park, while the Shai Hills "is already under Marina Tours".? Have we totally lost our collective minds? Incredible!

In 2001, the NPP won power and was faced with situation where ! NDC had granted five foreign companies permit to prospect in the forest reserves but had not issued any permit for excavating the forest reserves. According to Mike Anane reporting for the Environmental News Service ESN on March 4 2003, the foreign companies requested NPP government to grant them permits to "throw out the trees and the animals in the forest reserves to make way for full-scale surface mining operations?, since they collectively had spent over 10 million dollars in the reconnaissance and prospecting exercise, and they have to recoup their money. So the main concern of the companies was to get back their monies and some more. Ghana?s singular concern on the other hand remained its national interest.

The NPP investigated and fo! und that it was true that the ?past (NDC) administration, the Forestry Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and all the relevant statutory bodies were party? to the grant of permission to do prospecting in the reserves and that the companies invested millions of dollars and found gold deposits in commercial quantities in the reserves." The five multinational mining companies (Chirano Goldmines Ltd., Satellite Goldfields Ltd., Nevsun/AGC, Birim/AGC, and Newmont Ghana Ltd.) were ready to ?tear apart thousands of hectares of forest reserves in the Ashanti, Western and Eastern Regions of the country, if the government gives them approval to haul out what they describe as rich deposits of gold beneath the forests.?

NPP granted permits to the companies to excavate the forest reserves. The then NPP Minister of Mines Kwadjo Adjei Darko rationalized: "We inherited the problem from the past (NDC) government, whether they were coerced into granting the prospecting licenses to the mining companies or not, we do not know, but we are in a crisis, and we do not know what to do in the present circumstances. So we are at a crossroads and as a nation what do we do? The developed countries that are now at the forefront of environmental concerns took advantage of coal to develop during the Industrial Revolution."

Opposing NPP vehemently were environmentalist groups. Their position was effectively enunciated by Dr. Yao Graham, coordinator of the Third World Network, Africa Secretariat, when he told ENS, "The old la! w is very clear, there is no automatic movement from a prospecting license to a lease, the question is, was the government then acting in the best interest of the nation? Let me give you the example of the United States. When there was the huge gold rush, many people made huge fortunes, people became millionaires and multi-billionaires, and the money remained there. Point me one millionaire created by more than 100 years of exploitation of gold in Ghana. Huge fortunes have been made by all kinds of foreign firms operating in Ghana, but the returns do not remain in the country. These are extractive industries which are linked to circuits of exchange and accumulation outside this country."

Further arguments of the environmental advocates went like this: ?It's not a case of whether we should go hungry while the gold sits beneath the trees. Gold mining has been going on in Tarkwa, Prestea and Obuasi for so many years now - are the people there not hungry? Look at Samreboi, they have given this country so much timber with nothing to show - go there and you will see stark poverty. When the forest reserves are destroyed, the rivers will dry up and so will our lives. We have heard it all before. They came with all sorts of promises, but we saw nothing. They devastated our lands and livelihoods and showed little respect for basic civil rights. Our rivers and streams are now polluted with cyanide and arsenic from mining. Fish have disappeared from the rivers, and streams. Even snails, mushrooms and some medicinal plants are no longer available in the area. Crops also find it very difficult to grow on the large stretches of now barren land.?

Our national interests must necessarily include the proper nurturing of our natural resources such as the following. The Subri River Forest Reserve, a globally significant biodiversity area which is also the largest forest reserve in the country and a critical watershed between major rivers such as the Bonsa and Pra. There are the Kogyae Nature reserve, the Supuma Shelterbelt, the Opon Mansi in the Western region, Tano Suraw and Suraw Extension also in the Western region, Ajenjua Bepo in the Eastern region, Cape Three Points reserve in the Western region, and the Atewa Range forest reserve near Kibi in the Eastern region, which is also believed to be the most mineralized reserve in the country. The Atewa forest reserve, which protects the headwaters of the Birim, Densu and Ayensu r! ivers, has been declared by local and international conservation groups as a Special Biological Protection Area as well as a globally significant biodiversity area. Experts say that the Atewa reserve contains many plants species such as TWO UNUSUAL KINDS OF TREE FERNS AND SIX BUTTERFLY SPECIES WHICH ARE FOUND NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH.

Why would the Wildlife Department and the Attorney General not collaborate in getting proper legal foundation for their expansion of the boundaries of the Reserves when it took over the Forest Reserve from the Forestry Department and turned it into a Strict Nature Reserve? State Lands Act, Act 125 stipulates that when the State acquires land compulsorily, those on the land must be resettled and adequate compensation paid to them. Yet with the Kogyae Reserves acquisition as with the others, compensation to land owners is s! till owed. Expansion of the boundaries of the Reserve was necessary to protect more rivers sources. Witness migrant farmers from other parts of the district have been allowed to encroach on the reserves with impunity and have established large tracts of farms in the reserve. To this day, our leaders do not recognize the need for Land Reform!

In a World Bank sponsored report Hagan found that the major objectives that informed the creation of the Kogyae Reserve were to protect the head waters of the tributaries of the Sene and Afram rivers and to prevent the spread of the Savanna conditions; to protect the area from the south from harmattan and to maintain conditions favourable to the growing of agricultural crops in the area; and to maintain the high forest as a major and minor forest produce from the surrounding population. It is February of 2006 a! nd it would be a miracle if the Government could tell the actual number of farmers cultivating farms in the reserve. The seriousness of the environmental degradation lies in the fact that most of the farmers cultivate Yams, whose agronomic practice require that the land must first be stripped bare of all vegetation to facilitate the making of mounds for the cultivation of the crop. A settler farmer cultivated 18.2 hectares of Yams annually in the reserve. This same farmer was adjudged the best farmer in the district by the Ministry of Agriculture and the farm was used by the Extension Services Division of the Ministry as a demonstration farm for Yam farmers in the district. Are our priorities in order?

When a government replaces another in Ghana, there should never be a swing in Ghana?s National Interest only for the reason that ?a new sheriff had arrived in town?. Our National Interest must be sacred and above that of any individual?s or political party?s. It is policies geared at satisfying that interest that may change. Close to 50 years after achieving Independence, we should know what our National Interest entail which should be about development in education, health, science and technology, maintenance of adequate domestic food production for local consumption and production of more export crops. This requires us to jealously guard our natural resources and balance its usage for the greater good of the populace, not merely to assist foreign predators and exploiters to feed fat at the expense of degradation of our resources. It takes 40 years for forests to regenerate and once any portion of the forest reserves is dug! up, there is change in the character of the place forever. Operating a surface mine which requires the use of highly toxic chemicals such as cyanide and arsenic in these forest reserves with all these water bodies which are sources of drinking water is just not right.

Ghana need not be worrying about the environment, if our national interest is held paramount by all succeeding governments. Is it not paradoxical that a farmer encroaching on forest reserve and degrading the environment wins a national award as the best farmer? Couldn?t he have been resettled in the Afram or Accra Plains as his ?reward?? Go figure. Our priorities are indeed skewed. Now that every national asset is being sold, will the Black Star Square also be sold to Edison Car Parking System of New York? Now that our leaders are on a selling spree of our national assets, will they sell the Electoral Commission to my group of investors?

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