Background:
One of the avoidable threats to environmental sustainability and improvement in Ghana’s agricultural sector is bushfire. The very wide, pervasive and extensive nature in which bush fire occurs seriously affects the composition and density of vegetation and undermines the national efforts at sustainable development as it contributes in significant proportions to losses in soil fertility, desertification and general environmental degradation.
It is estimated that averagely 229 bushfires are recorded in Ghana on annual basis. The occurrence of bushfires is more pronounced in the northern savannah ecological zone and the effects on the lives of the people are quite worrying. For instance, food security continuous to be an issue of concern in the savanna areas as annual agricultural output continuous to diminish because of the impoverished nature of the soil and crops that are not harvested early are destroyed. As a matter of fact, it is extremely hard to find even an acre of land with vegetation cover all year round in the northern savannah area.
Surely, biodiversity is not able to endure the annual bush fires leading to desertification and some wild species getting extinct. Undoubtedly, bushfire results in atmospheric pollution due to the large quantities of carbon dioxide and smoke emitted into the atmosphere. The polluted air aggravates the hostile Hamattan conditions during the lean season.
Bad farming practices where most farmers engage in burning the vegetation as a way of clearing the land for tilling and hunting are well noted causes of bush fires in the savannah areas of Ghana.
Government’s recognition of the inextricable relationship between the environment and socio-economic development is key to sustaining any development programme in the northern savannah areas. In other words, the success of any livelihood approach will depend heavily on how the phenomenon of bushfire has been tackled in the savanna parts of Ghana.
In a recently held regional level consultative forums across the northern savannah areas with support from USAID-APSP to collate views, inputs and development priorities of youth and women farmers for SADA to mainstream into its Master and Medium Term Development Plans, the issue of bushfire and its devastating effects on livelihoods was repeatedly raised by participants in each of the groups’ presentations in all the forums.
While some groups in the forums wanted government to reactivate and effectively resource existing anti-bushfire teams at district and community levels, introduce youth against bushfire as one of the models of Youth Employment Agency (YEA) as well as work in partnership with community radio stations to intensive campaign against bushfire, others advocated a very comprehensive national policy on bushfire to deal with the menace particularly in the SADA catchment area
Recommendation
Considering the perennial occurrence of bushfires and its destructive nature on food security, environmental sustainability and poverty, NORPRA strongly recommends that government comes up with a policy reform that will give birth to a very comprehensive policy on bushfires to holistically deal with the issue for improved agriculture and livelihoods
Conclusion
For the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) to really achieve results from its agricultural–led transformational agenda there is the urgent need for it not only to make anti-bushfire an integral part of its Master and Medium Term Development Plan but take a step further to engage government for a comprehensive national policy on bush fire from which a national plan on bush fire control will be formulated.
Author:
Bismark Adongo Ayorogo
Development Practitioner and Executive Director
Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA)