Ghana is very concerned about the rate of loss of the country?s tropical forests, particularly the off-reserve forests. Whereas at the beginning of the 20th Century, the country had over 10 million Ha of forest cover, this had reduced to about 1.2 million Ha at the close of the 20th Century. The 1.2 million Ha of forests are also degraded in places and patchy because extensive small scale subsistence farming leading to serious habitat fragmentation. Until recently, the major perceived usefulness of the tropical forest is the commodity that can be extracted from it. Thus, logging was the number one usefulness of the forest, followed by its conversion into agricultural lands. Even though traditionally, communities have always extracted NTFPs, their value was never quantified by Government and hence appeared to have no value.
The workshop, which was attended by Parliamentarians, Government Officials, Policy Makers, Researchers, Traditional Chiefs and land owners discussed the value of the totality of the tropical forests and alternative approaches to forest resource usage such that we can derive benefits without necessarily destroying the forest.