In Ghana’s Upper West Region, the Zukpuri Community Resource Management Area stands as a beacon of hope for environmental conservation, sustainable development, and community empowerment. This sprawling 4,000-hectare protected area is part of the Black Volta River Basin, a lush landscape of forests, savannahs, and groves rich in biodiversity and cultural heritage that tells a story of community resilience towards a sustainable future.
Photo: Praise Nukator/UNDP Ghana
Forests Matter
Forests like the one in Zukpuri still cover almost a third of our planet’s land area. Healthy forests also play a crucial role in mitigating climate change by absorbing billions of metric tonnes of CO2 every year. Deforestation and degradation are still the biggest threats they face: over 420 million hectares of forest have vanished since 1990, with 70 million hectares affected by fires every year, and another 10 million hectares per annum disappearing completely. Reducing deforestation, managing forests sustainably, and restoring degraded forests has never been more urgent. These efforts are essential not only for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda, but also for curbing the emergence of new diseases linked to land use changes, preserving half of the global carbon stock that is stored in soils and vegetation, and ensuring the continued flow of 75% of the world’s accessible freshwater that comes from forested watersheds and wetlands.
Healing biodiversity
The forests of Ghana’s Upper West Region provide many products that help sustain the livelihoods of rural communities like Zukpuri, including shea nuts, honey, and edible fruits. They are particularly important as a source of medicinal herbs and plants, which traditional health practitioners use to treat almost half of the region’s population, as formal primary health care facilities is not yet universally available. With forest degradation, overharvesting and mismanagement threatening these precious resources, extinction became a real threat to some species that are key to traditional medicine in the region.
In response, the Upper West Traditional Healer’s Association partnered with rural communities and traditional authorities in the region to create the Zukpuri Community Resource Management Area in 2021. With support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the project aimed to conserve biodiversity, improve local livelihoods through sustainable practices, and preserve the cultural and medicinal heritage of the region.