On a Tuesday morning in July, Ghana’s Minister for Lands and Natural Resources stood before a room of journalists and delivered a sentence that, just a year ago, seemed impossible:
The report indicates that on a Tuesday morning in July, Ghana’s Minister for Lands and Natural Resources stood before a room of journalists and delivered a sentence that, just a year ago, seemed impossible:
It further notes that “The government’s priority is to protect the Achimota Forest.”
With those eleven words, Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah confirmed what environmentalists, civil society organisations, and ordinary Ghanaians had fought for since 2022: Executive Instrument 144 was dead.
The controversial directive, which had excised approximately 361.5 acres—about 146 hectares—from the Achimota Forest Reserve, was officially revoked. The land that developers had eyed for hotels, residential estates, and commercial complexes would remain exactly what it has always been: a forest.
But here is the provocative truth that no one is saying loudly enough:
This victory is not the finish line. It is the starting pistol.
Because policy can protect land. But policy cannot protect minds, hearts, or behaviours. Policy cannot inspire a generation to think differently about how they live, consume, produce, and gather.
That is culture’s job. And culture must do it creatively.
Achimota Forest is not just a collection of trees. It is Accra’s lungs. It is the city’s cooling system, its flood defence, its biodiversity bank. In a metropolis choking on exhaust fumes and concrete, those 500 acres of canopy are the difference between a liveable city and an unbreathable one.
When E.I. 144 took effect in May 2022, environmental advocates warned that Ghana was about to repeat the mistakes of cities that traded their green spaces for short-term profit. They pointed to Lagos, where unbridled development has turned flooding from a seasonal nuisance into an annual catastrophe. They pointed to Nairobi, where the encroachment on Ngong Forest has left the city vulnerable to droughts and heatwaves.
Ghana listened. The reversal of E.I. 144 is a rare moment in African governance: a policy error acknowledged, a public outcry heeded, a wrong righted.
Yet even as conservationists celebrate, a more complex question lingers beneath the canopy:
For decades, climate action in Africa has been trapped in a language that ordinary people do not speak.
Policy briefings. Donor reports. Scientific jargon. Technical frameworks. These are the tools of the climate establishment, and they have consistently failed to move the needle on public behaviour.
