Diversify Timber Species to Ensure Sustainability - Kumasi Wood Cluster Association Director | General News

The Executive Director of the Kumasi Wood Cluster Association (KWC), Gustav Adu, has mentioned that the shortage of timber as uncooked materials could possibly be attributed to extreme fixation by Ghanaian suppliers and shoppers on a slim spectrum of species.

He has, due to this fact, inspired a shift from the normal recognized species to embrace different options that would serve the identical goal or present a greater possibility.

He was fast to level out that “the availability of other emerging timber species with considerable physical and technical properties have been variously documented”.

Consequently, the KWC and its companions have been actively concerned in capability improvement and consciousness creation initiatives “geared towards the use of Lesser-Used Timber (LUS)/ Lesser-Known Species (LKS)”.

In line with that, his outfit launched and revealed a compendium on LUS/LKS of timber in Ghana in an easy-to-read method to facilitate efficient data uptake and utility by wooden customers.

The KWC has additionally developed the Ghana Timber Atlas, which affords info on the bodily and technical properties of a variety of Ghanaian timber species.

The atlas is also put in on telephones and different digital devices as an App, available on Google Play Store and Apple Store.

All these efforts by the KWC are anticipated to boost a clean transition to extra options that will defend the setting and guarantee sustainability within the timber trade.

The KWC can also be making relentless efforts in re-afforestation to get well depleted forests to battle the adverse affect of local weather change and in addition guarantee a sustainable timber provide.

Mr Adu was talking at an occasion organized by the Kumasi Wood Cluster Association (KWC) in collaboration with the Chamber of Construction Industry and the Timber Industry Development Division of Forestry Commission on the theme 'Emerging Wood Species Fit for Housing Development and Construction Works in Ghana '. The UKaid and the UK Timber Trade Federation (UKTFF), via an ongoing challenge titled “Building the capacities of Small-Medium Forest Enterprises in Ghana and Liberia to provide and Trade in Legal Timber (Phase II), sponsored the exhibition.

The Minister for Works and Housing, Francis Asenso Boakye, who graced the event, burdened that given the present over-exploitation of timber, the data about LUS will assist scale back stress on the well-known species and in addition present the housing sector with a number of options for building functions.

For his half, the Chief Executive of the Forestry Commission, John Allotey, disclosed that as a part of measures to fight unlawful logging within the nation, his outfit is using initiatives to advertise the business use of different equally beneficial timber species often known as Lesser-Used Species (LUS).

He is assured this may assist fight unlawful logging and allow the nation to attain the environmental aims of sustainable forest and administration (SFM) whereas remodeling the home market into an industrial hub for value-added processing.

Only 102 out of 715 tree species within the High Forest Zone are thought-about for inventory survey within the nation.

Until lately, lower than 60 % of the yield on common was harvested, leaving about 40 % unharvested.

Mr. Allotey famous that, for example, the rise in demand for timber as a uncooked materials for building, significantly in the true property sector, places a number of stress on forest reserves, a scenario that may result in unlawful logging, as such, selling business exploitation and use of LUS and plantation timber within the building house is anticipated to boost the provision and provide of authorized timber, significantly for the home market.

“Ghanaians and shoppers of timber everywhere in the world have a excessive style for conventional tropical timber species akin to Mahogany, Odum, Dahoma, Sapele, and Masonia, which have gotten scarce due to over-exploitation.

To keep away from the entire extinction of those prime species and its consequent ecological imbalance, there's the necessity to shift consideration from these few prime species by exploring the market potential of different timber species that could be of financial worth.

For instance, commerce statistics generated by the Timber Industry Development Division (TIDD) of the Forestry Commission present that in 2021, timber consumed on the home market was over 473,000m3, which is a couple of and a half instances the full quantity of exports of timber and timber merchandise which amounted to 303,229 m3 inside the similar interval, with some variations in worth although,” he mentioned on the exhibition of lesser-used and plantation timber merchandise in Accra.

He additionally underscored the necessity to innovate by supporting the native trade to scale back the excessive reliance on importation.

Additionally, he entered gamers in the true property trade via stakeholder dialogue with producers of wooden merchandise to create a mutually helpful market.