World Vision, an International Non-Governmental Organization on Wednesday organized a two-day workshop on “Behavioural Change on Natural Resource Management” for 40 participants from the Talensi-Nabdam District of the Upper East Region.
The workshop was aimed at building the capacity of stakeholders on how to adopt behavioural change programmes through community Mobilizations to support Natural Resource Management.
The participants were made up of Assembly Members, Opinion Leaders, Teachers, Community leaders and staff of the National Disaster Management Organization among others.
They are supposed to replicate what they have acquired at the workshop at their various communities’ level through community mobilization techniques to influence behavioural change on Natural Resource Management issues.
A Behavioural Change Specialist, Mr Sumaila Saaka, facilitating on the topic “Sustainable Behaviour and Social Change in Natural Resource Management”, took the participants through topics including “Behavioural Change Models, Use of analogies and Frameworks, the Role of Interventions, Strategies for Community Mobilization and Exploring the Enabling Environment”.
Mr Saaka explained that Natural Resource Management issues impinged on social, cultural and behaviour of the people and that it was necessary to work on the behavioural change of the people in order to be able to bring about a positive change on the environment.
He said behavioural change did not take one day to make a good impact but rather took a long time for community members to change their attitudes towards a practice.
Mr Saaka entreated the participants to replicate what they had learnt at the workshop in their communities through community mobilization techniques.
He expressed optimism that with vigorous behavioural change programmes, communities would change their attitude towards actions that caused environmental degradation, such as bush burning and indiscriminate felling of trees.
The Project Manager of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) of World Vision, Mr. Peter Abugah said World Vision, Talensi Nabdam Area Development Project, had put in place a lot of interventions including advocacy programmes, forest management plans and land use, alternative livelihoods among others in the District as part of its Farmer Management Natural Regeneration (FMNR) Project.
He explained that under the FMNR, trees that grew naturally were protected and farmers trained and empowered with skills to prune them at their tender age, to allow them grow naturally.
He said currently, through training programmes provided by World Vision, it had scaled up the programme from four communities to 10 communities in the District and mentioned the communities as Balungu, Yindure, Shia, Sepaat, Gorogo, Wakii, Yemeriga, Namolgo, Yagzore, Tongo-Beo.
“A total of 120 hectares of degraded land has been recovered and farmers are extending to more nearby communities. In fact the FMNR is the best method of conservation of natural resources. Although tree planting is good, usually the returns are not as good as FMNR.”
He indicated that despite the numerous interventions on the management of natural resources put up by World Vision, it was still grappling with the problem of bush fires and that necessitated the organization of the two-day workshop on Behavioural Change on Natural Resource Management.