Description of Need

The biggest problem in Ghana is the issue of wood removal, or deforestation. The reason Ghana suffers from this problem is because they lack the other resources to replace the wood. If there was a way to give the country of Ghana a substitute resource for houses, heating sources, and for its other uses that are not for exports, the severity of this issue would greatly decrease. According to Ghanaweb.com, “A study, described by its authors as the most comprehensive analysis of tropical forests, has disclosed that Ghana has the highest rate of deforestation, out of 65 nations, apart from Togo and Nigeria.” Also according to Gapminder.com, from 1990-2005 Ghana has cut down 91,073,000 cubic meters of wood (About the same volume as 36429.2 olympic size swimming pools).

The problem of deforestation is the worst problem because Ghana uses lumber for everything. The people of Ghana cut down trees for charcoal, pastures for livestock, farms, and for urban or industrial purposes. This means that they use wood to export and fuel industries, and use wood for heat and houses in urban areas. Deforestation is such a big problem that Ghana had to make laws in November of 2010 that made cutting down certain trees in certain areas illegal. Even though Ghana has made cutting down trees illegal, the amount of trees illegally cut down yearly is way beyond the number of people arrested for the crime. This is because timber is a common thing to have in a household and to be carrying around in Ghana it is hard to pinpoint what timber is illegal and what timber is not. Timber is a necessity for a lot of people's everyday life in Ghana. With Ghana's population rapidly increasing the forest reserves are depleting even faster, shown by the first graph below you can see that as wood and shrubbery increase over the years that the forests are depleting.

Because of the startling numbers of lumber being harvested, people of Ghana are at risk of Starvation, drought, and unemployment in the future, this is because the lumber industry is such a big employment opportunity in Ghana, which will also lead to that starvation factor because of how it is such a support for paying families to buy food. The reason why Ghanaians are at risk of unemployment is because the lumber industry is such a huge export and makes a lot of jobs for the people of Ghana. Ghana made roughly 137.9 million Euros ($150,242,050) from lumber in 2010 . In the end Ghana will be facing huge consequences if they do not find a way to lower their rate of deforestation within the next decade or two, the issue of deforestation will lead to habitat destruction, and higher CO2 emissions because there will be less trees to produce oxygen.