The highly anticipated Green Ghana Day is scheduled to take place tomorrow, on Friday, June 9, 2023, throughout the entire country.
This nationwide initiative aims to plant an impressive 10 million seedlings.
The event was inaugurated in 2021 by President Akufo-Addo, organised under the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, as part of the government’s ambitious afforestation and reforestation agenda.
The primary objective of the initiative is to restore the country’s depleted forest cover, which has been adversely affected by illegal small-scale mining and timber logging activities.
The maiden edition targeted to plant five million trees, but ended up planting over seven million seedlings.
In 2022, more than 26 million trees were planted, exceeding the 20 million target.
The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II officially launched this year’s edition of the Green Ghana Day on Wednesday, May 17 at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, urging all well-meaning Ghanaians to support the tree planting exercise.
The revered King said the Day presented an opportunity for Ghanaians to show patriotism and commitment towards protecting the country’s forest cover and leave the younger generation a much richer and greener Ghana.
“Government cannot do it alone. We must all get involved and support Government to come to grips with these matters,” Otumfuo Osei Tutu said.
The Asantehene pledged to lead his chiefs and people to plant 2.5 million trees to protect the enclave of Lake Bosomtwe in the Bosomtwe District of the Region.
The Government since 2017 has been taking several measures to restore the country’s lost forest cover, hence the Green Ghana Project is a necessary intervention to create national awareness of the necessity for collective action towards the restoration of the degraded landscapes.
The programme also aims at inculcating values of planting and nurturing of trees in the citizens, particularly among the younger generation, to mitigate the negative effects of climate change as well as beautifying the environment.
Averagely, more than 81 percent of the seedlings planted in 2021 survived while 72 per cent survived in 2022.