Ghana’s 550-kilometre coastline is in crisis.
From Aflao to Half Assini, the Atlantic Ocean is advancing. What was once a rich ecosystem that fed, housed and employed millions is being dismantled by tidal waves.
In Keta, entire swathes of land have been swallowed by the Gulf of Guinea. Coconut plantations that sustained livelihoods are gone.
"The sea keeps eating away the land, and we are losing our coconut trees," one of the residents told the Daily Graphic, refer to our cover page story.
Rising sea levels have destroyed habitats and crashed fish stocks. Fishers, processors and traders are losing income. Coconut oil businesses are collapsing.
The sea used to be our provider, but now it has become a depriver.
It is not just water doing the damage. Human activity has accelerated the impact.
Climate Adaptation and Sustainable Development Governance specialist, Prof. Bob Offei Manteaw, puts it succinctly: “Climate change is a contributor, but human activities — sand winning, mangrove destruction, wetland encroachment — have aggravated it."
The natural buffer, mangroves, are disappearing. These trees are the natural armour of coastal communities.
They store carbon, break storm surges and serve as nurseries for fish.
Yet as the sea encroaches, desperation is forcing people to cut them for quick cash and for fuel to smoke fish.
By cutting mangroves to survive today, communities are signing their death warrants for tomorrow.
The roots that once trapped silt and nursed fish are sold off, leaving the shore exposed.
In areas such as Keta, sand winning is a thriving industry. Coconut trees were common along beaches. Mangroves are being cut for firewood.
This is a vicious cycle: poverty drives ecosystem destruction, which deepens poverty.
For many community members, relocation is not an option, and rightly so.
"I was born here; I have lived all my life here; I fish to survive, so if you take me to another place, it will be difficult to survive there," 51-year-old Noah Otoo of Azizape said.
These communities prefer improvised methods of survival such as using sandbags, coconut husks, and timber poles to break waves.
At Anyako-Lashibi, we are told of the age-old practice where volunteers run a community early-warning information system for high tides to evacuate vulnerable households.
In some areas, families practise managed retreat, moving further inland.
But they also recognise the need for sea defence walls, and they are pleading with the government to do that.
While the Daily Graphic agrees that the government must listen to them, we also believe everybody must be part of the solution.
As an Associate Professor at the University of Ghana, Prof. Yaw Agyemang Boafo warns: sea defence alone is not the magic wand.
He said evidence across the world showed that concrete sea defence systems did not solve the problem, though they could help minimise its impact in some cases.
The most important intervention, he points out, is the restoration of lost ecosystems, wetlands, and mangrove vegetation, which are more important natural buffers.
The Daily Graphic supports his assertion, having observed that although the Keta Sea Defence, for instance, protects Keta and adjoining communities, the erosion has shifted to neighbouring communities such as Fuveme and Azizape.
The ideal intervention is a hybrid system: well-designed sea defence integrated with nature-based solutions.
This should include replanting mangroves, restoring wetlands, replanting coconut, and stopping sand winning.
Although a measure such as restoring wetlands could be gradual, banning sand winning at the beaches should be immediate, while replanting the mangroves could have a medium-term timeline.
What is happening from Ada Foah to Azizape to Keta and Half Assini is not a local issue. It is a national emergency.
Ghana risks losing communities, culture, schools, farmlands, and fishing grounds that fed her citizens for centuries.
The risk of creating climate refugees also stares at us.
The country needs urgent enforcement actions that come with alternative livelihoods for those affected.
The Daily Graphic supports the call for a hybrid coastal protection — combining engineered defences with large-scale mangrove and coconut restoration —using community labour.
We call for the creation of a Coastal Livelihood Fund as part of the Nationally Determined Climate Actions to support aquaculture, processing and skills for coastal youth, so they do not have to choose between hunger today and survival tomorrow.
Noah Aggrey's net can be mended. But who will mend Azizape?
If we continue to treat coastal erosion as an isolated regional problem, the sea will soon swallow the very heritage of the country and its people.
The sea that gives life is now taking it. Ghana must act before the tide takes everything.
