Mrs Lilian Nana Ama Awotwe-Pratt, Director of Business Development and Partnership (BDP), has called on stakeholders to help leverage the Community Resource Management Area Concept (CREMA) to improve Community-based Charcoal production.   

CREMA focuses on bringing together communities that share common resources and jointly take affirmative actions to manage their shared natural resources for sustainable management.   

The concept was developed by the Forestry Commission (FC) of Ghana to promote collaborative and participatory wildlife management.   

Mrs Awotwe-Pratt made this known in an interview with the Ghana News Agency as part of efforts to unravel novel approaches towards the conservation of nature for livelihoods and ecological health of the environment being championed by the Advocate for Biodiversity in Ghana(ABC-Ghana).   

Addressing issues on unsustainable approach towards charcoal production, Director of BDP, mentioned some challenges encountered in the sector.   

“Even though the economic benefits associated with charcoal production was good, unsustainable production coupled with the  harvesting of wood with its adverse impact on the respiratory health of people as well as forest deforestation and greenhouse emission were affecting our natural resources such as water, biodiversity and soil.”   

Mrs Awotwe-Pratt highlighted some benefits of achieving a sustainable approach towards charcoal production.   

She said the sustainable charcoal production project would introduce and train producers on the Agroforestry technology concept of woodlots establishment.   

Mrs Awotwe-Pratt added that it would also encourage the planting of indigenous bamboo and build capacities of the youth, especially women to empower their entrepreneurship skills to create bamboo products.   

On his part, Mr  Kojo Esson, the National Coordinator of ABC- Ghana emphasised the need to find ways to ensure that the natural resource management provisions in communities are at a centralised location managed by well-equipped people in the community.   

He advocated for the integration of natural resource management structure of the rural areas into ensuring that communities have the right energy and resources for production.   

The National Coordinator of ABC- Ghana urged the public, especially charcoal producers to help embrace the Community-based Initiative towards charcoal production in other to transform the artisanal charcoal sector into an environmentally friendly industry production in the country.