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Deforestation will cost Ghana low cocoa yields
Mr. Asin Nyarko, district manager for the Forestry Services Division, Nkawie, has attributed the low production of cocoa in the country and the current nationwide electricity loadshedding exercise to serious deforestation. And he cited illegal chainsaw operations as the chief cause of this distructive trend.
"Our biggest trees, which has been protecting our rivers and dams, are continually being felled illegally by chainsaw operators, as a result of which has dried up our water bodies, including the Akosombo Dam," he told reporters at a forest forum in Nkawie.
The forum offered a neutral platform for people and organisations with interest in forest management to engage in discussion of policies with the aim of ensuring equity, good governance and resource sustainability as well as helping to strengthen relations between the Forestry Commission and the general public.
Mr. Nyarko asked Ghanaians to stop blaming neighbouring Burkina Faso, who have recently built a dam, for their current power predicament, pointing out that it’s their own inactions and ignorance about the essential usefulness of the forest, which they have depleted, which has caused their present difficulties.
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