The Organisation for Indigenous Initiatives and Sustainability (ORGIIS-Ghana), an environment focused organisation, has commissioned a warehouse valued at GH₵82,000.00 at Nakong in the Kassena-Nankana West District of the Upper East Region.
The facility was handed over to the Sanyiga Kassena Gavara Kara (SKGK) Community Resources Management Areas (CREMA), one of the six CREMAs in the Western Wildlife Corridor in the Northern Ecological Zone, to enable members store their produce, including shea nuts and honey.
The facility also has an office for the Executive Committee of the CREMA and a honey processing centre.
The intervention with support from Noe, a French based organisation under its project dubbed “ECONOBIO”, is part of an integrated approach with focus on biodiversity conservation to promote green value chains and build resilience of communities to sustainably manage the environment and help restore degraded landscapes, forest reserves and wildlife.
It is also meant to empower communities, particularly those along the Western Wildlife Corridor, to sustainably manage their natural resources to avoid depletion.
Mr Julius Awaregye, the Executive Director, ORGIIS-Ghana, explained that the Western Wildlife Corridor was fast depleting through unscrupulous activities but had huge potential to contribute to addressing the challenges of climate change.
He said the intervention sought to resource the CREMAs through alternative livelihood interventions to help them sustainably manage the natural resources and reserves.
The warehouse facility would benefit nine communities in the Upper East and Upper West Regions along the SKGK CREMA and support seven women cooperatives who are into the picking of shea nuts and baobab fruits to store.
The Executive Director also revealed that the honey processing centre would be equipped with 120 beehives, bee harvesting equipment and other processing equipment to support CREMA executive committee to keep bees and process honey.
“It is part of the intervention that Noe is supporting three CREMAs in the Western Wildlife Corridor, so we are going to develop four of them in four different communities.
Our aim is to resource the CREMA so that they can have their own funds, to be able to manage the environment sustainably for all of us,” he added.
He noted that when the communities had support to use the resources to improve their livelihood, they would avoid destroying their environment while the CREMA executives would be encouraged to help protect the forest reserves.
“The environment is our biggest challenge because we want to see nature sustained and the Western Wildlife Corridor is a very sensitive area,” he said
Mr Abdul Wahid Arimiyaw, the Northern Ghana Coordinator, Noe, encouraged the communities to own the facility and avoid activities that would destroy the environment.
Ms Diana Lawrence, a beneficiary from the Nakong Community, lauded the efforts of ORGIIS-Ghana and Noe for the support over the years and noted that the warehouse would help the women cooperatives to store their shea nuts and baobab nuts for higher prices.
The Western Wildlife Corridor provides protection to the Sissili River and a link between the Mole National Park in Ghana and the Nazinga Game Ranch in Burkina Faso and serves as a travelling path for wild animals between the countries and vice versa