Ghana’s reforestation efforts will continue to struggle unless local communities are given direct incentives to protect and maintain planted trees, according to a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, Dr. Frank Ackah.
Speaking in an interview with The High Street Journal, Dr. Ackah said many tree-planting initiatives place strong emphasis on meeting planting targets but give less attention to what happens after trees are planted, particularly in terms of long-term care and community ownership.
He explained that in the absence of clear benefits, local communities often see forestry projects as government-led interventions that do not directly improve their livelihoods, reducing their willingness to protect planted areas.
According to him, this challenge is more pronounced in areas affected by land degradation and illegal mining, where environmental destruction has already weakened traditional land-use systems and local stewardship.
Dr. Ackah noted that programmes focused mainly on timber species tend to provide limited short-term value to surrounding communities, which affects their motivation to engage in protection and maintenance activities.
He argued that linking reforestation to direct community benefits, particularly through fruit-bearing trees that provide food and potential income, would improve participation and strengthen long-term survival of plantations.
“When communities see value in what is planted, they protect it. If they don’t see value, they wait for government to maintain it,” he said.
He therefore called for a shift toward community-centred forestry models that go beyond planting targets to include clear benefit-sharing mechanisms, arguing that this is key to sustaining Ghana’s environmental restoration efforts.
