Over the years, awareness and concern about environmental deterioration or degradation have grown in Ghana; these concerns are shared by people of different regions, cultures, religions, and social classes.

In fact, the activity is more felt in the Northern sector of the country.

In this paper, I tend to focus on why the deterioration of the environment is rampant in the northern sector and the measures to put in place to curb the menace.

First, deterioration or degradation is a change from a higher state to a lower state.

Secondly, environmental degradation is a process induced by human behaviour and activities that damage the natural environment.

Thirdly, poverty is considered a great influence on environmental degradation. This is the actual picture of the country, especially in the northern sector.

In many cases, overgrazing has destroyed grazing lands, forests and soil. Air and water have been degraded. As the people become poorer, they destroy the resources faster. They overuse the natural resources because they do not have anything to eat or any means of getting money except through the natural resources.

Due to a lack of sufficient income, people tend to depend directly on natural resources. As a result, they start to use and overuse every resource available to them when their survival is at stake.

As desperate hunger leads to strategies for survival, many trees in the northern sector are harvested for firewood, timber and art craft. Most of the poor use this firewood as their source of income by selling them, and arts craft products are also used for income generation.

Health accessibility in the sector is always lacking. This brings the people closer to nature by depending more mainly on traditional medicine for their health needs. The roots of the trees are, therefore, dug out for such purposes.

This leaves the soil exposed as the grasses are also grazed by animals. When it rains, the entire top and good soil are eroded, which makes it difficult for the soil to produce better agricultural products.

Day and day, rivers and drinking water are being polluted as the people's continuous effort to survive results in exploitation of the natural potentials to their advantage. Washing and dumping of bins in river bodies are also eminent.

Young and energetic youth are continuously migrating from such economic zones due to lack of education which prohibits the people from practising sustainable environmental agriculture.

It is essential to point out that, as long as this continue, the carrying capacity of the natural environment of the northern sector will also continue to reduce, which again have negative repercussions for the development of the sector.

In a Presidential address on 12th international soil science, Kanwar said, "mankind today is faced with many challenges, the biggest being food shortages and environmental degradation, both resulting from population explosion and poor resource management." ( Kanwar, 1982).

The key to curbing these issues in Ghana, more significantly, the northern sector, in my view, is for government to come with environmental policies as pointed out by Porter hypothesis that, if there is an environmental policy that governs the use of resources there will be sustainability. This can resort to effective management of resources and mitigation of resource depletion in the northern economy or sector.

We cannot deny ourselves the fact that there are invisible hands at the doors of power behind resource exploitation to the disadvantage of the poor as Pope Francis put it, "A selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads to both to the misuse of available natural resources and the exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged" and later any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity" (Laudato Si 2015).

This calls for government's commitment and political will on how the available resources can also be managed by implementing a restoration process that can sustain and recover the deteriorated land area.

Another meaningful way we can rescue both the environment and the people (poor) is for government to revisit the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) idea and make it more functional with the authority of increasingly creating jobs and employment for the people.

This will make them gain income and be able to afford a higher quality of life, which includes electricity, housing, food and water, health, and education. So, for example, people can be in a better position to afford nice roofing materials instead of using grasses, and they can have somewhere to wake up instead of harvesting resources every day.

It is also worth knowing that many of the people are very skilled in a way that government can build huge art and craft structures where these people can be employed and still practice their art but in a more professional manner where the harvesting of plants can be done sustainably.

The government can export these products to other countries where a lot of money can grow the economy. This, in effect, will anchor the people and stop them from migrating to perceived employment destinations.

It also scales down on policymakers to educate and show the people how important the environment is to man and animals. Like the Holy Father, Pope Francis put it, "the people and planet are part of one family where the earth is our common home".

Though education cannot always be a solution for all people, a few can see natural resources more differently than being educated. Therefore, although it must be emphasised that poverty eradication can take a while, poor people can still use natural resources but will be in a position to do it in a sustainable way that will benefit them and the environment. 

In his second encyclical letter(Laudato Si, #53: 2015), Pope Francis noted, Undeniably, the poor are the victims, "We have to realise that a true ecological approach always becomes a social justice approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor".

In conclusion, it is essential to emphasise that poverty leads to resource deterioration; people utilise resources to meet their basic needs without caring for the future. This results in resource degradation, and it further deteriorates them.

The environment Kuznets hypothesis indicates that development influences environmental degradation. When there is development, there is environmental degradation, and this leads to economic growth. The growth of the economy will reduce the overutilisation of resources. In this direction, a "positive change" in people's per capita income will change the state of the Northern environment.