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Mr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Minister of Education, led the management of St Mary’s Basic School in Korle Gonno to plant trees in the school as part of the government’s Green Ghana Initiative to preserve the vegetative cover.

The initiative, spearheaded by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and the Forestry Commission, is expected to plant five million trees across the country.

It is also aligned with the Ghana Forest Plantation Strategy (2016-2040) and government commitment to various international agreements, including the Sustainable Development Goals, the African Landscape Restoration Initiative and the Bonn Challenge.

The Minister said the programme was a great moment for the country to collectively plant trees to safeguard the environment and urged students to learn more about the importance of trees to protect them from destruction.

He urged the management of the school to continue to water the seedlings to grow well, saying “I will personally come from time to time to check the state of the trees.”

Dr Adutwum said the Forestry Commission had embarked on a programme to provide seedlings to schools across the country to encourage students to embrace the initiative to have a positive attitude toward the vegetation.

He encouraged the school authority to ensure that the students write a report from time to time on what was happening to the trees to test their understanding of the country’s vegetative cover.

The Minister said the motivation to plant five million trees in Ghana formed part of a strategy and a programme to embark on aggressive afforestation to protect forests and the environment in Ghana.

He said the initiative was a joint responsibility for which more broad-based support was needed to address the adverse degradation of Ghana’s forests and ecosystem.

An analysis of satellite data published by a U.S.-based World Resource Institute found that the loss of Ghana’s primary forest cover jumped 60 per cent from 2017 to 2018 – almost entirely from its protected areas.

The government, however, refuted the 60 per cent figure, saying it had increased by 31 per cent between 2017 and 2018.