The Metropolitan Archbishop of Cape Coast, Most Rev. Charles Gabriel Palmer-Buckle, has underscored the need for the country to sustain the tree planting exercise.

He says it is in the country’s interest to put in place measures to make the exercise a priority.

Speaking at the Arbor Week of the Catholic Church that coincided with the Green Ghana exercise at Anomabo in the Central Region, the Archbishop intimated the Catholic Church will plant one million trees every year to help in greening Ghana.

He is convinced the Green Ghana Project has come at a good time and it will gravely help to complement what the Catholic Church has been doing during its Arbor Week celebration every year.

He explained, “This arbor week has coincided with the Green Ghana Project, which we think is in order.

"In fact, we are going to continue and we intend for the whole month of June, the rainy season, to have contributed, at least, one million trees in the Catholic church, nationwide, to the Green Ghana Project of 5 million trees.”

Every year, he explained, the church will have the Arbor Week every year in which they will conscientize people about the importance of preserving nature.

He stated, “You know in the Catholic Church, we have what we call the Arbor Week and it dates back to the 1980s, a week that we set aside to plant trees, to look at the environment to see what we are doing wrong in order to rectify it and restore what has been destroyed through human activities.”

According to him, Pope Francis, in 2015, came up with a document that is titled ‘Care for our common Home,’- the earth, its resources, creatures and human beings, adding, they have celebrated this document the whole of last year.

He added, the Pope has now decreed 7 years of implementing the document and they are going to try an ecological restoration where everyone is invited to join the restoration generation.

“We are part of nature. We must have a feeling for nature. Nature is crying, we must be compassionate. We must be creative. We must have beautiful ways of restoring generation and restoring creatures and creation.”

Head of the Development Office at the Archdiocese of Cape Coast, Rev. Fr. Stephen Amoah Gyasi says, the Catholic Church would strive to sustain the green Ghana project.

“The sustainability is the problem but for us at the Archdiocese of Cape Coast, we can sustain it. Of course, we need support. When you give the trees to the church, believe me, we are going to do it but then we need the support of everyone to make it happen,” he stated.

Father Amoah Gyasi further added, “we need to protect our environment and we need to make sure that everybody is part of it. That part of our flag, the greener part of our flag, would be deepened for posterity through the planting of trees.”

MP for Mfantseman, Ophelia Mensah Hayford, who joined the tree planting exercise assured she would roll out programs in the constituency that would make tree planting exercise a priority.

The Transport Minister, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah as well as many state dignitaries took part in the tree planting exercise.