Civic Response has trained four hundred and eighty-eight (488) community forest monitors to use the recently developed Ghana Natural Resource Monitoring (GhNRM) mobile application to report forest infractions.
The training, which took place in November 2024, saw community forest monitors from 19 districts in eight (8) regions of the country convene in Accra to receive training on gathering, recording, and reporting forest infractions using the indigenous app.
Developed by DEVNEST Consult, the GhNRM app is an all-inclusive digital platform that enables real-time reporting, monitoring and management of forest infractions occurring in forest fringe communities. It has both a web platform and a mobile application. The mobile application is specifically designed for community forest monitors whose user access is limited to raising and sending alerts to the web platform.
Civic Response previously used the Real Time Monitoring System (Forestlink) developed by Rainforest Foundation UK to engage in community forest monitoring in real time. However, it had to switch to GhNRM following concerns raised by the Forestry Commission about foreign partners having access to local data in the raw state.
The monitors were delighted to be selected by their communities to represent them. After using the application, they noted that it was simple and easy to navigate. The training beneficiaries then pledged to return to their respective communities to retrain others to be part of the monitoring process.
The monitors’ capacities were also built in Social Responsibility Agreements (SRA), Compensations for Destroyed Crops, Logging Operations in Ghana as well as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) which will soon come into effect. This was done to enable the monitors identify what is legal and what is not in order to report the illegalities using the application.
The participants were drawn from 125 selected forest-fringe communities from 19 districts across the Western, Western North, Ashanti, Eastern, Oti, Ahafo, Bono and Bono East regions. They included community forest monitors from five (5) Civil Society Organisations communities including Civil Response, EcoCare Ghana, Tropenbos Ghana, Rights and Advocacy Initiatives Network and Nature and Development Foundation.
By: Belinda Boator│Civic Response
