A tropical rainforest
Ghana is the latest national member to join PEFC, the third in Africa, after Cameroon and Gabon.
“It is fantastic to welcome Ghana as the latest member of the PEFC Alliance,” said Ben Gunneberg, CEO of PEFC International.
“Once our system has achieved PEFC endorsement, our country’s forest owners, forestry companies and the whole forestry sector will be able to demonstrate their sustainable forest management practices, here and abroad,” said Emmanuel Amoah Boakye from the Working Group on Forest Certification.
“Now we are a PEFC member, we are looking to the next stages of preparing our national system for PEFC endorsement,” Mr Boakye explained. “This includes stakeholder consultations on the draft national standards, pilot testing and then finalizing the standards. Once these are complete we will submit our system to PEFC International.”
While Ghana already has a national standard for the sustainable management of natural forests and plantations, the PEFC Collaboration Fund supports the development of other aspects of a certification system, such as the Group Certification requirements and a Chain of Custody Standard.
Ghana follows Hungary as the latest country whose membership can be traced back to seed funding provided through a PEFC Collaboration Fund project.
