Журнал географии и стихийных бедствий
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The Management of Wetlands in Ghana as a Compliance to the Ramsar Convention

Idrees Maimoona*

The government of Ghana recognizes the importance of wetlands as a habitat for wildlife, in the maintenance of the water table, mitigation of flood conditions, and water purification. Wetlands resources are also known to be of socioeconomic importance and have been harvested for construction poles, fuel-wood, timber for furniture, and craftwork. Furthermore, wetlands are of importance as fishing, hunting, and grazing areas, and play an important role in crop production and domestic water supply.

For reasons of these memories and Ghana's wetland system is still facing threats such as mining, soil loss, wetland pollution and over exploitation of resources, the government of Ghana has rectified various conventions and implemented a series of policies in the country to ensure the management of wetlands of international importance. The national wetlands strategy was also developed as a way to manage and conserve wetlands in Ghana. Aside from the government’s efforts to manage and conserve wetlands, the traditional communities in Ghana have adopted traditional ways of protecting these areas that are of enormous benefits to them.

Although the Ghanaian government has implemented a series of measures to protect the wetland ecosystem and made remarkable achievements, it still cannot completely solve the existing difficulties. Therefore, this study proposed some changes that can help solve these problems. First, the government establishes the legislative concept of giving priority to protection, focusing on restoration and sustainable utilization, and formulates a careful Wetland legal system; secondly, the government should formulate corresponding wetland conservation policy principles or plans and strengthen scientific and technological research to improve the level and quality of traditional wetland protection in Ghana; thirdly, Ghana strengthens the protection of wetland through the establishment of wetland nature reserves; finally, formulating relevant laws to improve the level of local wetland protection, the government could truly protect Ghana's wetland ecosystem.

To ensure that a quality study is completed, the researcher adopted a qualitative approach, where date is accessed from both primary and secondary sources in other to explore all the areas of vital concern to the management of wetlands in Ghana.