The participants came from the Western Wildlife Corridor in the Kessena –Nankana West District in the Upper East and the Sissala East District in the Upper West Region.
The CREMAs established by the communities under the Sustainable Land and Water Management Programme, funded by the World Bank ,to help protect and conserve biodiversity and natural resources.
The communities include, Wuru, Kwapun Kunchogu, Banu, Pido, Nakong, Katu and Kayoro, Banu and Bassisan drawn from the Kessena –Nankana West District in the Upper East Region.
Facilitating the training session of the programme at Nakong in the Kassena-Nankana West District, Dr Andrew Kyei Agyare, explained that among the main reasons of the programme, is to build the capacity of the community members to formulate by laws and gazette them to protect the community resource management areas.
He said the by laws would not only give legitimacy to the constitutions of the various CREMAs, but would also bring new ones on stream in the future.
He indicated that the training programme, which was sponsored by the BUSAC Fund , was to help validate the constitution of the CREMAs so as to make it generally acceptable to all those who would be participating in the project’s governance and management.
He said the CREMAs are key to effective and sustainable management of natural resources since fringe communities are involved and are direct beneficiaries.
Dr Agyare entreated the participants to put in place pragmatic measures to protect the CREMAs.
He said every CREMA is unique because they are on a different socio ecological system and are therefore different governance systems.
He expressed the need for them to undertake the exercise so that the peculiarities of the area are captured to make it relevant to the people.
He said the idea of the CREMA was conceived in the late 1990s and was conceptualised fully in 2000 when the Wildlife Division came out with an appropriate policy for CREMA establishment and management.
Speaking on the benefits of CREMAs, the Upper East Regional Manager of Wildlife Division, Mr John Naada Majam, said the project has a considerable economic impact for each of the participating communities and nearby towns such as tourism, hunting and bush-meat production activities.
He said the main objectives of establishing the CREMAs are to secure scarce natural resources within a site, through sound conservation practices and regulations, to improve the livelihood of members.
This, Mr Majam, said is done by incorporating the management of natural resources into land use and building of the capacity of members in wildlife resource management through information dissemination.
He told the stakeholders to adhere strictly to the guidelines of the CREMA document developed together with the communities.
“This document outlines significant steps to follow for the establishment of sustainable management of community-based wildlife production in order to generate income and optimise community benefits.
“Those guidelines show how to restore and manage wildlife production sites and propose preliminary resource commercialisation options and benefit sharing modalities amongst the community stakeholders during the restoration phase when each community manages its sector,” he said.
The CREMA is managed by an executive committee represented by selected members. The CREMA and representative management structures are non-profitable and guided by a constitution in recognition to all national and district by laws.
Source: GNA
