Working Group On Forest Certification Ghana

Ghana has a long history of forest management, aimed at ensuring responsible stewardship over the forests within her territory to yield sustained environmental, social and economic benefits for the owners and for the larger society. In this period of almost 100 years that some form of regulated forestry has been practised, concepts of what constitutes ”good” or “responsible” forest management have evolved in response to various developments and pressures. The development of written, verifiable standards that would make it possible for specific forests to be certified as being responsibly managed is thus only one of the latest initiatives in the process of developing quality forest management in the country.

1.2 Ghana’s forests, forest ownership and administration

Ghana may be divided into two broad ecozones with two broad natural forest vegetation:

• the closed forest, two-peak rainfall ecozone carrying closed tropical moist or “high forests”;

• The drier open forest ecozone carrying savanna type woodlands.

Management for commercial timber production has largely taken place in the closed forests. Plantation Forestry for timber production has, in the past, been a minor activity compared to the natural closed forest management.

An important feature of Ghanaian Forestry is that forests and forest lands largely belong to various social groups or communities, not to “ Government”. The attempt by the early colonial Government to take over ownership of those forests that would be designated as permanent forests (forest reserves) met with such strong resistance that it had to be abandoned.

Nevertheless a tradition of the forest owning communities technically managing their forests has not developed. The Public Forestry Authority has therefore not been only policy maker and regulator of forest management, but has always played an active role managing forests on the ground on behalf of the forest owners.

The logging and wood industry is largely a private sector activity, being undertaken by numerous small and medium sized commercial enterprises. The acquisition of the rights to harvest on a defined forest area for a defined period of time, and the activities of the logging, wood manufacturing and wood exporting companies have been regulated by legislation and governmental administrative instructions for about 100 years.

Substantial portions of the natural forests have, to date, been legally set aside and managed for permanent protection and for the conservation and sustainable production of an array of environmental, social and economic benefits. These areas which are physically demarcated on the ground, surveyed, pillared and described are usually referred to as the forest reserves. They constitute part of the permanent forest estate of the nation, to be managed for the benefit not only of the owners but also for other segments of the society.