By Gloria Osei Mensah
Over the past four months, the five northern regions have been battling drought due to lack of rainfall. Most of the food crops planted by farmers are burning out due to lack of rainfall.
In spite of the fact that the southern part of the country is experiencing continuous rainfall, the northern parts of the country are getting dry and hot. Framers are losing out due to delayed rainfall and there is fear of famine in the next few months. What could be the cause of these harsh climate condition which could have negative economic impact on farmers?
According to economic experts and environmentalist, the rampant felling of trees especially, rose woods, shear trees and indiscriminate destruction of forest and game reserves in the northern regions of Ghana are the cause of the drought.
Ghana banned rosewood logging in 2019. Despite that, logging continues, driven by China’s insatiable appetite for the lumber and the substantial amounts of money Chinese logging companies spread around in some of Ghana’s poorest communities.
As recently as 2021, Ghana exported more than $2 million worth of endangered rosewood logs to China. A Chinese logging interest in Ghana’s Yipala community operated until late 2021, according to experts who visited the site.
It is estimated that more than 6 million rosewood trees have been logged in Ghana since 2012, despite various bans that have been imposed since then.
Rosewood grows in some of the country’s poorest areas, where more than two-thirds of the population live in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1 per day.
Chinese logging companies pay local loggers up to $32 for every cubic meter of rosewood theyharvest. Further along the supply chain, local merchants can earn up to $130 per cubic meter.
Extreme poverty in northern Ghana lets Chinese companies exploit the people and the trees by supporting an entire economy of loggers, transporters and middlemen connecting the Ghanaian forests with Chinese furniture makers, Dumenu wrote.
“Indeed, so long as there is widespread poverty, few economic opportunities, [and] inadequate social intervention programs to address the poverty and livelihood needs in rosewood endemic areas, it will be difficult to keep them off the resources,” he added.
