The August 3 call by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan for better management of tropical forests in Central Africa has been supported by leaders at the Seventh-day Adventist Church world headquarters.

“The region’s lack of institutional capacity and inefficient law enforcement favors the illegal trade in forest products over sustainable forest management,” says the U.N. news report. “Governments of the region have a limited capacity to help finance projects aimed at developing their forest ecosystems in a manner that will be sustainable. Complicated bureaucratic procedures and poor coordination are also to blame. These factors combine to threaten tropical forests and allow unsustainable forest management practices to persist. In response, the Secretary-General recommends that rural people and those involved in private industry be given a greater role in forest management. He also stresses the need to step up measures against illegal logging and poaching.”

Matthew Bediako, general secretary of the Adventist world church agrees. “As a church organization, we take very seriously the Christian principle of being stewards of this earth and its resources,” he says. “The misuse of the natural world, the destruction of Creation, is part of the human problem that must be addressed. We support attempts to improve not only the spiritual side of humanity, but also its physical and material needs. To destroy the environment brings added poverty and misery.”

Bediako, who like Annan comes from Ghana, says the church is helping through its aid organization, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA). “Over the past ten years ADRA has met the challenge of de-forestation by planting more than 11 million trees,” says Bediako. “The destruction of the environment in West Africa has been immense. International logging companies have clear-felled most of the rainforest from Nigeria west to Senegal. We are trying to heal some of the damage.”

The loss of such a natural habitat and resource has not only impacted plants, animals, and villagers, but has aggravated arid weather conditions. Without the forests to help bring moisture and prevent erosion of the soil, the threat of drought increases.

“To date 32,000 farmers and their families have been assisted with tree seedlings, which will provide poverty reduction and food security, along with environmental protection,” says George Baiden, ADRA Ghana country director. “We see this program as a vital method to greatly improve the quality of life of villagers in the community and to reverse the damage done to the ecology.”