Ghana Landscape Restoration and Small Scale Mining Project (GLRSSMP)

GENERAL OVERVIEW

The Ghana Land Restoration and Small-Scale Mining (GLRSSMP) Project is a joint World Bank and Government of Ghana project under an IDA credit facility. This project was earlier proposed as the Ghana ASM Formalisation Project (GASMFP) with the objective of formalising the ASM sector, promoting sustainable ASM practices and building institutional capacity of institutions to manage ASM operations.

In order to build synergies for institutional collaboration and data sharing and show enhanced results, the World Bank merged the Landscape Restoration Project of the EPA under the policy direction of the ministry of environment science, technology and innovation (MESTI) with the Ghana ASM Formalisation Project of the MLNR into the GLRSSMP

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVE

The project development objective of the GLRSSMP is “To strengthen integrated natural resource management and increase benefits to communities in the targeted degraded savannah and cocoa landscapes”. The project will focus on the following core interventions;

  1. restoration of degraded lands for agricultural productivity;
  2. strengthening sustainable management of forest landscapes for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services;
  3. formalization of illegal ASM for sustainable mining; and
  4. land use planning for integrated landscape management to optimize land use to land characteristics

PROJECT COMPONENTS OF GLRSSMP

The Project has five components as part of its implementation arrangement. These are;

  1. COMPONENT 1: Institutional Strengthening of Governance and Partnerships for Participatory Landscape Management
  • COMPONENT 2: Enhanced governance in support of sustainable ASM
  • COMPONENT 3: Sustainable crop and Forest landscape management
  • COMPONENT 4: Project Monitoring and knowledge management
  • COMPONENT 5: Contingency emergency response

PROJECT LOCATION

The proposed Project will be implemented in the Northern Savannah Zone and the Forest Transition Zone (in the central-south areas of the country). The project focus on scaling up the interventions within forest landscapes based on the lessons learnt from SLWMP (in Northern Savannah region) and ongoing work in the FIP the cocoa landscapes (in the Transition Zone). The SLWM, forest restoration, and on-the-ground activities in support of ASM will be undertaken in converging landscapes (see project map below).

In the Northern Savannah Region, Project area will fall mainly within the Guinea Savannah Zone and a small area of Sudan Savannah.  Project activities will focus on the sub-watersheds of two Volta River tributaries flowing into the country from Burkina-Faso in order to concentrate impacts and affect outcomes at the sub-watershed level. The Kulpawn-Sisilli and the Red Volta sub-watersheds have been prioritized due to SLWM needs, high poverty and presence of biodiversity corridors and newly established CREMAs. Project field activities will focus on an estimated 100 communities: roughly 80 for SLWM activities in agricultural land and up to 28 for CREMA activities across eight Districts included in these two sub-watersheds

In the South-Central Region, Project area will be located within the Pra River Basin, one of the most intensively used basins in Ghana for settlement, agriculture, logging and mining. The total Basin area is approximately 23,200 km2 and it extends through almost 55 percent of Ashanti, 23 percent of Eastern, 15 percent of Central, and 7 percent Western Regions of Ghana. The Pra Basin falls within the Upper Guinean rainforest, which has been recognized as a global biodiversity hotspot due to a high presence of endemic species. Nationally, the Ashanti region, which covers more than half of the Basin, is the second largest producer of cocoa beans in Ghana and an area with substantial active ASM activities.

A map of Ghana showing the project districts under the Ghana Land Restoration and Small-Scale Mining project (GLRSSMP)

ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL COMMITMENT PLAN (ESCP) FOR THE GHANA LANDSCAPE RESTORATION AND SMALL-SCALE MINING PROJECT. GLRSSMP-P171933-ESCP-Negotiated.pdf

Reports
GLRSSMP-P171933-ESCP-Negotiated.pdf
GH-LRSSMP-RPF-and-PF-May-2021.pdf
GH-LRSSM-Project-P171933-ESMF-May-2021.pdf
Ghana-LRSSMP-SEP-May-2021.pdf
GH-LRSSM-Project-P171933-Final-ESMF-February2021-social-management-frame-work.pdf