Ghana is set to receive up to Fifty Million United States Dollars (US$50,000,000.00) from the World Bank for reducing carbon dioxide emissions between 2019 and 2024.

This was disclosed by the Climate Change Manager of the World Bank, Mr. Erwin De Nys, on Wednesday, 9^th November, 2022.

The amount is in return of some ten million tons of carbon dioxide emissions expected to be reduced by 2024 within a six million hectare stretch of the West African Guinean Forest. 

Mr. De Nys was speaking at an event on Ghana’s Forest Solutions to Climate Change, organised by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources at the ongoing twenty-seventh session of Conference of Parties (COP27) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

He said Ghana has been an important and active member of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility since its establishment in 2008, and is one of the first countries to transition to emission reduction programmes and results-based payments.

Mr. De Nys said the country will soon receive US$4.8 million, representing over nine hundred and seventy thousand (970,000) tons of verified and validated emission reductions between June and December, 2019.

He said the payment will be used to reward stakeholders in emission reduction, and boost confidence in Ghana’s REDD+ process. In addition to this payment, Mr. De Nys said Ghana will also benefit from the Enabling Access to Benefits while Lowering Emissions (EnABLE) Programme of the World Bank, to further reduce emissions and ensure social inclusion.

On his part, the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, called for strategic collaboration to bridge the climate financing gap. He said existing financing options are inadequate to deal with the enormity of the problem; and having missed the one hundred billion dollars ($100 billion) climate finance pledge made in Copenhagen, there is an urgent need for stakeholders to work together to bridge the gap between ambition and action.

Mr. Jinapor called on governments and all actors to deliver action beyond pledges and declarations.

“We are at a stage in the climate struggle where mere talk, commitments, declarations and/or pledges are not enough. Consistent with the clarion call of COP27, this is the time the world must “walk the talk” and get on with action and implementation of the many years of unfulfilled climate action promises”, the Minister said.

He said Ghana was committed to forest and nature-based solutions to climate change, which is evidenced by the over 547,000 hectares of degraded forests cultivated between 2017 and 2021, and the over thirty million trees planted under the Green Ghana Project, as well as the verified and validated emission reduction under the Ghana REDD+ Strategy.

He expressed his confidence in COP27, which has been termed action and implementation COP, to deliver real action towards limiting global warming to the one point five degrees Celsius (1.5ºC) target set out in the Paris Agreement.

The UNDP’s Principal Advisor on Climate and Forests, Tim Claris, who also spoke at the event, commended Ghana for her forest solutions to climate change, and said the country deserves to be rewarded for actions being taken in the forestry sector.