A project to plant 10,000 trees nationwide has commenced at the Ningo Senior High School (NINSEC) at Ningo-Prampram in the Greater Accra Region.
An initiative of Memory Tree Initiative, an NGO committed to commemorative tree planting to combat global warming, the project is in partnership with the School on whose premises 1,000 acacia trees have been planted.
The 1,000 trees are to protecting the School’s vast unused land, and by extension, instill in the students, the habit of afforestation and the importance of trees to humans.
Initiator and National Coordinator of Memory Tree Initiative, Nana Yaw Osei-Darkwa, said apart from the medicinal and economic values of trees, they protect the environment, hence the need for the younger generation to be encouraged into tree planting.
He urged Ghanaians to desist from cutting trees since human existence depend on trees.
“Trees are very important for us as human beings. It turns carbon dioxide to oxygen for us to breath, have medicinal values and at the same time have economic values and yet people turn to cut down without replanting, so I entreat every one of us to take the future into our own hands and make our environment very conducive to live in” he said.
Mr Osei-Darkwa said his outfit has taken up the mandate to plant trees due to the years of deforestation that has engulfed the nation, noting this has led to barren lands that has contributed to the loss of agricultural values.
He said the first 1, 000 trees were sponsored by the planting partners of Memory Tree Initiative’; One Tree Planted, whom he hoped would support the 10,000 trees programme as well.
The Headmaster of Ningo Senior High School, Mr Edmund Botchway, welcomed the project, saying the trees which are being planted are going to serve as a place for relaxation for both students and teachers.
He said as an agrarian, it was his expectation the initiative would to be taken to other schools nationwide to help students know the importance of planting trees to replace felled ones.
According to the United Nations, despite forests being essential to the balancing of the global ecosystem among others, decades of unsustainable use and management have destroyed, degraded and depleted enormous quantities of the planet’s natural forest.
It estimates that over 13 million hectares of forests continue to be lost each year, hence the need for investment into tree planting to be scaled up.
The world’s forests, according to the UN serves as home to 80 per cent of all land-based species of animals and plants.
Around 1.6 billion people depended on forests for their livelihoods.
This makes the protection and sustainable-management forests a priority of the global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
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