An open letter to the Yaa Naa ………………Deforestation and plastic waste are overwhelming Yendi area

An open letter to the Yaa Naa

………………Deforestation and plastic waste are overwhelming Yendi area

By Doris Yaa Dartey

Your Royal Highness, Yaa Naa Abubakari Mahama II, King of Dagbon. Your ascension to the Dagbon throne has brought a deep sigh of relief to Ghana and beyond. For about three decades, this country collectively held its breath, and literally cried—wishing and praying for peace in the Dagbon kingdom. During the years of conflict, Dagbon was not breathing right, and for that reason, the development of parts of the kingdom stalled. 

PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT ARE BEDFELLOWS

So your enskinment is to ensure not only peace but development as well. I recall my personal experience in 2012 when I attempted to visit Yendi, the Dagbon capital. As I approached the area, I spoke to a friend who calls the area home. He firmly cautioned me not to dare. His reason? It is a dangerous place and my safety could not be guaranteed. With fear in my heart, I quickly aborted the trip and headed back to Tamale. 

But as recently as mid-March, I finally visited Yendi and spent a full day touring various small communities in the municipality. My verdict is that your people are very nice! They are very welcoming! They are making strides to improve their lives. 

The purpose of my visit was to interact with community members regarding UNICEF’s intervention to promote the building of household toilets. The energy, determination and pride of your people to construct and maintain their own household toilets is very admirable, and a sign that they truly care about the quality of their lives and of the development of their area.

Your Majesty, the reason I am writing to you is to bring to your attention two key observations I made of the Yendi neighbourhood; and for you to find ways to resolve them. The two troubling issues are: the rapid deforestation of the area, and the interlocking of plastic waste with the earth. These problems are unconscionable and require strong leadership to resolve. Interestingly, these issues are very visible from the main roadside. Everything communicates! The roadsides of Yendi speak volumes. 

RAPID DEFORESTATION MUST CEASE!

Your Majesty, the deforestation of your area is observable from the booming commercial activities along the roadsides and in the trucks leaving the Yendi and Mion municipalities. I was shocked at the number of vehicles loaded to the brim with wood and wood products like firewood and charcoal. These fully loaded trucks were gleefully departing the Mion and Yendi area. The trucks had the appearance of people who are carting out the spoils of war! 

To top it up, there is brisk trading in firewood and charcoal by your own people, which was evident from the heaps of wood products displayed for sale by the roadside. I bore witness to a roadside that is piled up with the veins of your land! This gives the area an appearance that destroying the forest is the main money-making occupation. 

It is as if Dabgon is being destroyed just so people in Kumasi, Accra, Takoradi and beyond can cook with open fires! It is as if civilization had not come so the ecologically fragile lands of the northern parts of this country must be destroyed at all cost to satisfy the insatiable appetite of Ghanaians to cook in the same ways our forebears of yesteryears cooked! 

Why is the place that is closer to the Sahara Desert the chief supplier of firewood, charcoal and rosewood to Ghana and beyond? Is this behaviour from a certain self-destructive tendency, from a death wish of some sort? Or could it be that there are some periods outside the farming season, when the people of your area have no work to do so resort to cutting down trees, not thinking far into the consequences? 

A Cree Indian proverb has it that: “Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money.”We cannot wait for such a gloomy environmental fate to befall us. Your Majesty, could you therefore decree for an end to the indiscriminate cutting down of trees in your kingdom? 

PLASTIC WASTE: THE DABGON FLOWERS!

Your Majesty, I am a keen observer of plastic waste. Generally, I was shocked about the prevalence of plastic waste in your kingdom. Apart from the usual plastic waste scattered in and around habitations across the country, I observed a strange phenomenon, which I had not seen anywhere else in Ghana. 

Just before Mion and in communities towards Yendi and beyond, there are odd scenes of patches of plastic waste that had over time, become interlocked with the soil. They are multi-coloured so stand out from the colour of the earth. They comprise of sachet water waste as well as plastic bags. Clearly, they are single use plastic waste that the users mindlessly tossed about. So over some years, as the wind blew them around and the rain watered them down, they joined forces and grabbed onto the soil. 

So the plastic waste that had interlocked the earth is not new waste. They had been there for so long that they consider themselves as part of nature and therefore belong to the earth. But their very appearance betray their true character: that they are foreign to your environment. As is the nature of non-biodegradable plastics, if no one removes them from the spot where they had lodged, they will remain there for several hundreds of years.  

As I focused on this phenomenon, trying the make sense of it, the thought crossed my mind that this may be a classic case of the leftovers of the protracted Dagbon conflict. My guess is that during the period of conflict, when the area was in a free-fall, the environment suffered as much as (or probably more than) the human beings. 

Your Majesty, it will be great if you will organize your people to rake out the plastic waste from the roadsides as a sure way of removing these ugly scars of conflict and to truly usher in a new era of peace and development. 

Then in a grand move, please lead Ghana to place a ban on the sale and use of plastic bags. Granted that sachet water will have to be with us for a very long time. With some proper management of collection, disposal and recycling, the waste from sachet water can be controlled. But plastic bags of all sizes and colours do not belong in your kingdom, or anywhere else in Ghana.

dorisdartey@gmail.com