The Upper East Regional Minister, Dr Ephraim Avea Nsoh last Thursday tasked the Local Steering Committee (LSC) of the Ghana Sustainable Land and Water Management Project (GSLWMP) to ensure that the project was implemented very well to achieve the desired impact.

The GSLWMP  which started in 2011 in eight Districts drawn from the Northern, Upper and Upper West Regions  is aimed at improving land management  in selected micro-watersheds in Northern Ghana to reverse the land degradation and enhance agriculture productivity.
  
The Project which is funded by a Global Environmental Facility (GEF) is to also help improve spatial planning through integration of watershed management and development plans. The five year project aims to support the Sustainable Development Initiative for the three Savannah to realize the vision of “a diversified and resilient economic zone in the north” with significant regional environmental benefits.
 
The Regional Minister told the stakeholders that considering  the impact on climate change coupled with the environmental degradation, bushfires and the declining  of soil fertility  nature  of  the three northern regions,  the project must not be toyed with and must be given all the necessary attention it deserved  to ensure that it achieved  positive results.
 
He stressed the need for the implementers of the project to be more  proactive, committed and dedicated and  said it was regrettable  that  after  Government had worked hard to bring interventions to help improve upon the livelihoods of the people,  most of them were  not well implemented to achieve the desire results.
 
Dr Nsoh told the stakeholders that the project which was piloted in the eight Districts across the three northern regions would only be up-scaled base on its successes.
 
Enumerating some the successes of the project so far, the Regional Director of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Mr Asher Nkegbe mentioned that at the Community level, watershed management planning sessions had been held whilst watershed management plans were being developed in the beneficiary communities.
 
“The Technical Coordination Office(TCO) in collaboration with the three EPA Regional Offices, and District Agriculture Development Units (DADUs) in the selected Districts have been undertaken sensitization and awareness creation programmes on various local environmental issues in the prioritized communities of the selected Districts”, the Regional Director stated.
 
According to the Director, radio programmes were also aired at the Regional level to create awareness about the project, conducted   10 monitoring visits to 75 existing sub-projects sites and conducted 26 demonstrations in all the eight selected Districts.
  
The Regional Director commended the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), the Forest Service Commission and Wild Life Division of the Forestry Commission, the Water Resources Commission for effectively collaborating with the TCO and the EPA to realize the successes made so far.
 
The meeting which brought together the LSC , MOFA Directors,  Forestry Division and District Coordinating Directors from the operational   areas was to afford members of the LSC  the opportunity to review the progress of work on the implementation of the project activities  and as well as  establish the way forward.

GNA