For years, the people of Kassena-Nankana West District in Ghana’s Upper East Region have watched helplessly as their land suffer the harsh weight of climate change.
For decades, wildfires, once seasonal threats, became annual threats, devouring farmlands, destroying forest reserves, and leaving trails of charred earth where crops once flourished.
Human activities including cutting down of trees for charcoal, burning farm and forest residues for agricultural purposes, and hunting for bushmeat constantly depleted many forest reserves, farmlands, and economic trees such as baobab, dawadawa, and mangoes, among others, destabilizing the ecosystem and biodiversity.
The rains, once predictable, became erratic, and prolonged droughts turned fertile fields into parched dust.
But today, however, the narrative is beginning to shift.
“It was heartbreaking to see our crops vanish in flames every year,” says Mr. Anas Abdul-Nashiru, a smallholder farmer in the Navio-Sanwo community.
He however added: “But now, I see new trees, fresh leaves sprouting growing on the land that used to be bare. We’re learning how to protect what we have.”
The narrative is changing due as a result of the intervention of an old land restoration method dubbed Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), being implemented under the European Union-funded Landscape and Environmental Agility across the Nation (EU LEAN) project.
The four-year project, which began in 2022, is implemented by a consortium led by Rainforest Alliance, World Vision Ghana, Tropenbos Ghana, and EcoCare Ghana in the savannah, high forest, and transition zones of Ghana.
The project aims to directly contribute to national efforts at conserving biodiversity, improve livelihoods of smallholder farmers increase climate change resilience, and reduce emissions from land use.
It also seeks to implement integrated landscape management models in the three priority landscapes through functional and sustainable landscape governance structures.
These are supported by smallholder farmers’ adoption of sustainable agriculture and good forest management practices, increased market incentives, and diversified income-generating activities.
FMNR intervention, time-tested solution
Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) one of the critical interventions under the project being implemented by World Vision Ghana in the Kassena-Nankana West District, is gradually helping 25 communities in the area to reclaim their degraded lands, destroyed environment, and biodiversity—and restore hope.
The FMNR is an easy and low-cost land and forest restoration technique used to increase the number of trees in the field without necessarily planting new ones but by protecting and managing existing trees and shrubs through pruning to enable them to regenerate naturally.
The concept is practiced in about 25 countries globally as an effective and efficient land restoration strategy. In Ghana, the concept has helped to restore 750 hectares of landscapes in the Talensi District from 2009 to 2019.
Under the EU LEAN project, through the FMNR intervention, more than 300 hectares of degraded landscapes in the Kassena-Nankana District are undergoing restoration, and 500 smallholder farmers have been trained in FMNR practices and supported with cutlasses, sickles, pruning knives, and hand gloves.
The technique, which focuses on the natural regrowth of trees and shrubs from tree stumps, roots, and seeds, is breathing new life into the landscape which farmers were trained not just to conserve but to regenerate their land which impact is today visible, and hope restored.
Bushfire Contral Mechanism
With proper pruning, selective protection, and community cooperation, these once-overlooked sprouts have grown into strong trees that have also put life back to the degraded lands by enriching the soil. and providing shade and organic matter for crops.
Through the project, 500 farmers and community members were trained as fire volunteers to ensure that allocated forest reserves were protected against wildfires while pruning existing shrubs to enable natural regeneration.
“This land was dead. Now, it is alive,” Mr. Roland Apugido, the Assemblyman for Navio Electoral Area, said while standing at the site of a 53-hectare forest reserve that had been regreened through the FMNR approach.
“And it’s because we stopped cutting and started growing,” he said.
For the past three years, we have not recorded any bushfires, and people don’t burn on their farmlands when preparing for the farming season like it used to be some years ago.”
Mr. Frederick Awovire, another smallholder farmer, said the FMNR approach was helping many communities to build resilience to future climate shocks.
“Apart from the fruit and economic trees such as grapes, blackberries, shea, dawadawa, baobab, and mango, among others, which we were losing are gradually coming back, we are also getting medicine from some of the indigenous trees,” he said.
Strengthening Resilience and Food Security
Mr. Emmanuel Owusu, former Manager of the Forestry Commission, Navrongo Division, who was instrumental in the implementation of the EU LEAN project, described the FMNR approach as crucial to restoring degraded lands and forest reserves.
He said, unlike tree planting, the FMNR approach was less expensive to practice and stressed that through the intervention, several hectares had been protected against degradation and the strategy was contributing significantly to regreening the area and protecting certain zones.
He said: “Due to the harsh weather patterns in this part of the country, it is difficult to plant trees and achieve high survival rates. Tree planting is more costly compared to the FMNR intervention, so we have started adopting it into our strategies to build the resilience of communities against climate change.”
Mr. Mohammed Bukari of the Kassena-Nankana West District Department of Agriculture described the FMNR intervention as a game changer, adding that the project was contributing to food and nutritional security.
“Now, the economic trees that were disappearing are coming back, the soil moisture and fertility are improving due to the regreening of the forest and trees on farmlands, and many animal farmers are also getting fodder for their animals,” he said.
Some farmers attested that the FMNR approach is building their resilience against climate change.
“In the past, the wind would blow away the topsoil, and the scotching sun would wither everything sown in the belly of the land” Ms. Comfort Didoabate, a widow with three children from Nania, recalled.
“But now the trees protect our farms. We don’t lose everything when the weather changes,” she said.
Alternative Livelihoods and Environmental Governance
Recognising the fact that most community members depended on the forest for their livelihoods, the EU LEAN project introduced alternative livelihood interventions such as beekeeping and small ruminant rearing to reduce pressure on the environment.
Additionally, the project established a Landscape Management Board comprising seven members to monitor and support communities in ensuring environmental sustainability and adherence to FMNR practices.
The move has strengthened local-level natural resources and environmental governance, resulting in the enactment of bylaws which have helped to protect the environment.
Mr. Joseph Talata, World Vision Ghana Project Officer in charge of the EU LEAN project, noted that apart from the FMNR approach, the project also supported nurseries to be established which produced seedlings distributed to farmers for planting.
“The four established nurseries have raised and distributed a total of 40,292 tree seedlings to farmers and communities where the tree species include shea, cashew, umbrella tree, mango, and rosewood,” he said.
SDGS and Upscaling of FMNR
Mr. Joseph Edwin Yelkabong, Manager for the EU LEAN project at World Vision Ghana, said research had shown that Ghana lost 19 percent of its forest reserves in the past decades and stressed the need for strategic efforts to restore the environment.
He made a strong case that FMNR needs to be integrated into both national and district-level land and forest restoration strategies to help re-green the environment and fight against climate change.
According to the Forestry Commission, 6.6 million hectares of Ghana’s 8.2 million hectares of forests have been depleted due to activities including illegal mining.
Between 2021 and 2024, Ghana planted 52 million trees under the Green Ghana (now Tree for Life) project, spending GH₵2 million each in 2021 and 2022, GH₵2.5 million in 2023, and GH₵1.5 million in 2024.
Goal 13 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts and preserve the environment by 2030.
With barely five years left until the deadline, there is an urgent need for the government to integrate FMNR approaches into national land and forest restoration efforts to complement the current tree-planting exercises.
“We call on the government to make it mandatory, especially for districts in the savannah, to deliberately integrate FMNR into their medium-term development plans,” Mr. Yelkabong added.
SOURCE: Access Agric
