WA, April 30, GNA- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has been tasked to collaborate with relevant institutions to strengthen and transform the existing District Environment Management Committees into statutory committees of District Assemblies to make them more effective. This would enable them to work and raise awareness on desertification, its causes and effects on land use within the operational areas of the Ghana Environmental Management Project (GEMP), which has just taken off in the Northern, Upper East and West Regions.

Mr Maxwell Kofi Jumah, Deputy Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, further urged Members of Parliament and District Assembly members being representatives of the people, to join hands with his Ministry to find solutions to the problem of desertification in the Northern parts of the country.

He said this when he opened a day's sensitization workshop on GEMP for policy makers and personnel of relevant organizations in the Upper West Region at Wa on Wednesday.

GEMP, which is an eight million dollar five-year project, being implemented by the EPA and relevant institutions with the support of the Canadian Government, has been designed to address land degradation especially at the community level in the three Northern regions. Mr Jumah expressed the hope that at the end of the project period, EPA would have worked towards improving legislation on land uses that tended to degrade the environment and enforce existing environmental regulations related to desertification.

Mr George Hikah Benson, Upper West Regional Minister said the Lawra and Lambussie Districts in the Region were being assisted by the UNDP and the EPA to implement a guinea fowl project on pilot basis. This project, he noted would go a long way to benefit grass root communities that were directly dependent on natural resource exploitation in the dry areas of the region for their livelihood.

According to him, over 50 active Environmental Clubs have been formed all over the region to mobilize the youth to carry out practical environmental improvement activities, while communities and schools had also been empowered to establish about 200 hectares tree plantations and woodlots. In an address read on his behalf, Mr Jonathan Allotey, Executive Director of EPA said a recent study by the World Bank and the Department For International Development (GFID) estimated that the cost of environmental degradation in Ghana was about 475 million United States dollars or 5.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.

The Loss in gross national income due to land degradation was estimated at nine billion United States dollars in Africa, he added.