Archive for category: Publications

This Annual Report gives a comprehensive report on our activities and successes in 2019.

This is a comprehensive report on activities undertaken and successes achieved in the year 2018.

Civic Response, with funding from Fern, through the Forest Governance, Markets and Climate (FGMC) programme organised a training for a cross section of media personnel from across the country to develop a team of media personnel who would be interested in using the knowledge and skills to improve investigative journalism and media reportage in the natural resource environment and governance sector. Below is a report of the training.

The Ghana Timber Transparency Portal is a web application which is linked to the Ghana Wood Tracking System (GWTS). This public portal is the gateway to the GWTS and forest management in Ghana. The portal was designed, as part of the Civil Society-led Independent Forest Monitoring (CSIFM) Ghana Project, to provide information for both passive and active monitoring of the issuance of credible, transparent, and acceptable FLEGT licence through improvement in access to timely, accurate, and relevant information. The portal can be accessed via this url: https://www.ghanatimbertransparency.info

This manual gives instructions on how to access and use the portal. The CSIFM-Ghana Project was implemented by Civic Response through the FAO FLEGT Programme with funding from the European Union, Swedish International Cooperation Agency and the United Kingdom Department for International Development.

The greatest milestone of the Project though was the building and launching of the Ghana Timber Transparency Portal; a public portal that provides access to information on logging in Ghana. The portal can be accessed by all stakeholders both in and beyond Ghana in real time via the url: www.ghanatimbertransparency.info.

Our focus in 2017 was on advocacy campaign against mining in forest reserves. A review of the guidelines for mining in forest reserves was initiated by the Chamber of Mines through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the intention of passing the guidelines into policy and law. Kasa facilitated a CSOs’ discussion on the issue in May 2017 which enabled CSOs including Civic Response and Wacam to make inputs, analysing why the guidelines could not be passed into law.

Forest Watch Ghana observes with great concern recent allegations about involvement of CEO of the Forestry Commission of Ghana, Mr. Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, popularly known as Sir John, in illegal mining. FWG, therefore, calls for investigation into the allegations.

Ghana has launched the Ghana Timber Transparency Portal, a public portal that provides access to information on logging in Ghana. The portal can be accessed by all stakeholders both in and beyond Ghana in real time via the url: www.ghanatimbertransparency.info. This is part of governance reforms in the forest sector happening as a result of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) signed between Ghana and the European Union in 2009.

The Ghana Timber Transparency Portal was developed as a result of collaboration between Civic Response (a leading natural resource and environmental governance policy advocacy organisation in Ghana) and the FC under the auspices of the former’s Civil Society-led Independent Forest Monitoring (CSIFM) Project with funding from the EU, Swedish International Cooperation Agency and UKAid under the FAO-EU FLEGT Programme.