An Open Letter To The Executive Director Of Ghan's EPA!

The Executive Director,                       28/3/211
Environmental Protection Agency,
Accra.

Dear Sir,

Re: Creation Of A Buffer Zone For Atewa Range Forest Reserve & The Off-Reserve Slopes - Bordering Kibi Goldfields' Concession.

At a meeting between P. E. Thompson Farms & Commodity Exports Limited, and the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Mining Department, on Friday, 18th March, 2011, your Mining Department's officials agreed, after sighting a map provided by the Minerals Commission, that if we wrote to you indicating the necessary scientific evidence to support it, the EPA would create a buffer zone to ensure that the operations of Kibi Goldfields, do not in any way endanger the vital ecosystem of what has been designated a Globally Significant Biodiversity Area (GSBA), and, which, unfortunately, part of that company's concession borders.

In that regard, we refer your Mining Department and all the other relevant EPA departments, to the recommendations contained in Conservation International's (CI) Rapid Assessment Programme's (RAP) Bulletin 47.

It provides all the necessary scientific evidence, and reasons, why such a buffer zone ought to be established to protect a key ecosystem services provider, with watersheds, the health and well-being of which about 80 percent of urban Ghana's population's drinking-water supply, depends on.

We do hope that this crucial step will be undertaken quickly, with the help of scientists from Ghana's tertiary institutions, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Water Resources Commission and the Forestry Commission, to protect what is one of the world's most important biodiversity hotspots, and arguably, the most important ecosystem services provider in West Africa.

We are extremely grateful to your Mining Department's officials, for their patience, thus far - despite my often frayed temper when we have met - over the little over two years that we have been interacting: to try to ensure just such a positive outcome, of the sort that we have now finally arrived at.

We would like to commend Mr. Sekyi, and his very able team, in your Mining Department, for their sense of professionalism, which has informed all our discussions. It is gratifying to know that Ghana has such dedicated public servants protecting our nation's natural heritage.

And many thanks too, to the whole of your very important organisation, for finally agreeing to protect the Atewa Range upland evergreen rainforest reserve, and the off-reserve slopes area, Sir.

At a time when global climate-change is impacting so negatively on our homeland Ghana, in so many ways, it is definitely the right thing to do!

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Kofi Thompson
(DIRECTOR)