Replenishing the Forests

New systems will manage harvesting and planting

Timber was once second only to cocoa in export earnings. Now it lags behind, gold, cocoa and tourism. However, measures are now being put in place to regenerate timber production and to replenish the country's forests.

A plantation development centre has been set up in one of the high forest zones, just outside the Ashanti capital of Kumasi, and research is being conducted at the Forest Research Institute into the best growth methods.

A permissible volume of tree felling has been drawn up (about 1 million cubic meters) to ensure the forest is sustained.
From this year a Timber Utilisation Contract has been introduced that will give licences to people to manage an area of forest in accordance with a predetermined plan on how the trees will be harvested and replenished and what social amenities will be provided. "We are encouraging private sector involvement in plantation development," says Christiana Amoako Nuamah, the Minister of Lands and Forestry. She wants to encourage: "Not large scale companies but families and communities, districts and farmers who have sustained holdings of land that can be harvested. Because this is a tropical forest, trees can be ready for harvesting in 12 to 15 years."

The aim is to track the logs from
where they were grown and cut

A system of documents is also being introduced, she says, that will certify when wood has come from a sustainable managed forest.

"We are now testing it so that we can track the logs from where they were grown, cut, which mill they were sent to and in which batch they were processed," she says.

This will mean being able to identify the farm or the mill for buyers from Britain and elsewhere.
"We will be able to locate it on a map and say: this came

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