Under the direction of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, the Forestry Commission has signed an Emission Reductions Payment Agreement (ERPA) with Emergent Forest Finance Accelerator Incorporated (Emergent), a non-profit organization based in the United States that organizes and leads the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition.
According to the deal, Ghana would be paid up to $50 million at a unit price of $10 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent in exchange for emission reductions of up to 5 million tons.
On Friday, December 1, at the 28th session of the Conference of Parties (COP28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Ghana became the first nation in the world to sign the agreement.
Samuel Abu Jinapor, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, signed a Letter of Intent on behalf of the Government at COP26 in Glasgow, United Kingdom.
The Deputy Minister in charge of Lands and Forestry, Benito Owusu-Bio, chaired the Committee that the Minister later established to work toward obtaining a legally enforceable ERPA.
As main negotiators, the Committee has been collaborating with the Forestry Commission, and as a result, Ghana is now the first nation to get a legally enforceable ERPA.
A binding ERPA with Emergent is being worked toward by about 25 countries and subnational governments, including forest nations like Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and the Republic of the Congo.
The Lands Minister said that the signing of the Agreement is additional evidence of Ghana’s concentrated efforts to turn around her forest landscape restoration fortunes using the appropriate sustainability protocols during a ceremony held on Sunday, December 3, at COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
He asserted that governments need to step up their efforts to implement forest and nature-based solutions to climate change because they are vital in this dire situation.
Mr. Jinapor claims that this new agreement will support ongoing efforts to stop climate change.
Additionally, he expressed his excitement for Ghana and Costa Rica to sign ERPAs under the LEAF Coalition and urged governments and the private sector to increase public and private financing for forest countries to work with the LEAF Coalition to deliver high-quality forest carbon. Andreas Bjelland Eriksen is the Minister for Climate and Environment in Norway.
As they have the capacity to provide up to a third of all global climate solutions, forests and other nature-based responses to climate change have been at the forefront of successive COPs since 2021.
