The Convener of Green Republic Project (GRP) – a youth-driven non-governmental organisation combatting climate change and global warming through tree-planting, Nana Yaw Osei-Darkwa, has called on the Ministry of Roads and Highways to develop a policy that will ensure contractors plant trees along roadsides.
According to him, this will help the agenda for overcoming the devastating climate crisis and its implications for society. He said it will also help replace trees that are pulled down to make way for the construction of roads.
“I would encourage the Minister of Roads and Highways to come up with a policy whereby there will be a clause that ensures every contractor responsible for the construction of certain kilometres of roads plants some trees. For instance, there should be an estimate on the number of trees that were cut down; and therefore we can plant some to replace them,” he noted.
The Green Republic Project is an indigenous non-profit based organisation founded on the knowledge and firm belief that tree-planting remains the most cost-efficient nature-based solution to capture carbon.
As part of a multi-faceted mitigation strategy, the team from Green Republic strongly believes that planting and nurturing trees can play an important role in the fight against climate change and global warming.
Speaking on the theme ‘Reversing the climate trends, no future without trees’ at the 3rd Annual Climate Benefit Ball in Accra, he noted that the current situation with climate change calls for stronger collaboration between individuals and corporate organisations.
Mr. Osei-Darkwa believes that working toward more sustainable communities is not only about technology and infrastructure, but also for public awareness and changing everyday habits toward responsible behaviour.
He added that: “The logic behind our ‘engaging the future’ series is to reach out to every Ghanaian, especially children and youth, to raise awareness about sustainable environmental practices with special emphasis on climate change and the threat it poses to the continued existence of humankind. This campaign, I shudder to say, is not about making a one-off donation but about sustainable partnerships as captured in SDG 17 for fostering a new environmentally conscious culture of reasoning. Until we do this, a large majority of our people will continue to operate in ignorance; and that will endanger the collective”.
Mr. Osei-Darkwa mentioned that by reaching out to every single schoolchild in the country, his outfit seeks to escalate awareness in a bid to make them ambassadors of sustainable environmental practices.
He encouraged all to continue supporting the vision, acknowledging that the team alone cannot do it by itself. Again, the target is to visit 20 schools across the country by close of year with the ‘engaging the future series’ tour; and also raise the tree count from a moderate 56,000 to 100,000 trees by end of the planting season in September 2023.
