Spiritual Awareness Campaign

Though A Rocha Ghana emphasizes the Christian message of creation care in all its work, in 2005 an “Environmental Spiritual Awareness Campaign” was conducted in 12 communities around Mole National Park to identify faith backgrounds and practices in these areas. By gaining deeper insight into the cultural and religious make-up of these fringe communities where we do so much work, it was hoped that our conservation efforts could be further enhanced.

In collaboration with the Wildlife Division Support Project at Mole National Park, A Rocha Ghana subsequently uncovered a plethora of taboos and religious rules that in generations past have served as essential tools of sustainable biological resource preservation throughout the northern region. However, with the creation of Mole National Park and subsequent change in ownership of natural space, such taboos—from those prohibiting the consumption of fish from streams that provide water to those condemning the killing of Elephants and cutting of fruit bearing trees— have increasingly fallen out of practice. This situation of deteriorating conservation emphasis is partly the result of initial park failure to do community outreach, instead alienating local people and generating antagonistic attitudes toward environmental conservation through enforcement of strict rules. However, limited livelihood options and decreasing incomes in these rural areas where populations continue to grow on already stressed lands has also forced people to broaden their resource base and abandon traditional conservation values in the struggle to subsist.

Combined with our existing efforts to improve the livelihood situation in these park fringe areas, the “Spiritual Awareness Campaign” delivered an environmentally focused religious message to both Christian and predominately Muslim groups, seeking to rekindle belief in those original, beneficial morals. Emphasis at these instructional meetings was placed on Biblical and Koranic support for responsible environmental management—there is a God-given relationship between people and the land and as humans made in the image of God, we have been entrusted with the careful stewardship of the Earth. Individual people and communities must thus strive to make a difference toward healing the land. By combining knowledge about wildlife options, through our CREMAS and environmental education programmes, with such religious offerings, it is hoped that traditional emphasis on conservation can not only be restored, but greatly enhanced in these rural fringe Mole areas.