Climate change is here, no doubt
Mrs Josephine Appiah (not real name) went to the market to buy some okro and garden eggs for a meal for the family but aborted the idea on reaching the market. This was because the vegetables were not only very expensive but those she found looked so unappealing that she risked buying very bad vegetables if she dared.
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Disappointed, she had to quickly change the menu for the day, but, alas, the tuber of yam she decided to buy was no good either and very expensive too. She wondered what was happening. Few years ago, she could get anything she wanted from the market, including food items that were not in season.
The plight of Mrs Appiah is a major challenge that many women and some men who buy food items from the country’s markets go through every day, as a result of the uncertainty of today’s climate, the heightened unpredictability of rainfall and its impact on farming and agriculture in the country.
When it first came up for discussion on the global stage, it sounded strange and a far-removed phenomenon from us, but climate change has increasingly become a frightening reality.
The effects of climate change, include irregular rainfall patterns
What makes climate change effects such as drought and floods even more critical is the dependency of major farming communities in Ghana on rainfall. The percentage of cultivated land under irrigation in Ghana is estimated at 0.89 per cent (23,657 hectares).
What is climate change?
Although still shrouded in some mystery, the visible signs of climate change are all around us every day, shown by the unbearable scorching sun, the torrential rains, the uncertain rainfall pattern, severe and prolonged harmattan and rising sea levels as a result of melting ice from the Antarctic that continues to submerge communities along the coast, among other factors.
In just two years, five communities in the Keta Municipality – Fuveme, Dzita, Kporkporgbor, Havedzi and Xorvi – have surrendered to the sea. This is just one example of how rising sea levels have claimed human habitations in Ghana and it is certain that when the world’s geography is rewritten it would show that water has taken more space than was the case centuries ago.
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Despite the government’s efforts at reclaiming land and stopping the marauding sea from causing more havoc through the construction of very expensive sea defence walls at Keta, Ada and Tema, the sea’s fury has not abated. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in its 2006 report on the status of Ghana’s coastal zone, has warned that two-thirds of the total land area along the country’s coast is in danger of being consumed by the sea.
For the naïve, when it comes to the issue of climate change, a ready reference is the recent harmattan, which unusually started early December last year and lasted till after mid-February this year with the same intensity that it began with and made the aviation industry suffer very huge losses in cancelled scheduled flights.
Climate change simply refers to a marked change in the world’s hitherto known or structured climate pattern, brought about by the activities of man including the excessive release of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere or the burning of fossil fuels.
Our contribution to climate change
Ghana, like many other developing and African countries, has continually stressed that it has contributed very little to the advancement of the climate change menace. While this may be true, we can no longer sing that song of contributing very negligible doses of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.
The Atorkor Sea Defence Project at Keta
The industrialised countries also began with that same thinking, but with time, they became the major polluters of the world and are now holding us all to ransom. Although the sovereignty of the world’s nations has permitted them to impose restrictions on their borders and even airspace, so long as the entry of humans is concerned, unfortunately they can do very little to seal up their atmosphere to prevent CO2 emissions from reaching them.
What it means is that one country’s environmental carelessness affects all others. We cannot, therefore, afford to act irresponsibly and go the same way that the industrialised countries went in their bid to industrialise, by using fossil fuels that emit GHG, and therefore, pollute the atmosphere.
We must consciously go for green energy – solar, wind etc. An old adage says “little drops of water make a mighty ocean”.
Our restrictions on emissions and pollution seem to be very lax, especially with regard to the motor industry. Vehicles emit so much thick smoke (carbon monoxide) on our roads that you are sometimes inclined to think a vehicle is literally on fire, and there are no sanctions whatsoever!
Aside from the emissions check by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) when vehicles go to renew their roadworthy certificates, which most don’t do, it is a wonder if there are any other mechanisms in place to measure emissions from cars on the road or from machinery that use fossil fuels. At what point are owners sanctioned for pollution?
Indications are also that many people have gone back to the use of fuel wood and charcoal as a result of the high cost of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), thus further depleting our forests and making us more vulnerable to the vagaries of climate change.
At a national forum on intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) in Accra in August, 2015, the Deputy Director in charge of Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment, Science Technology and Innovation (MESTI), Mr Peter Derry, said in recent times Ghana’s natural resources and environment have been under serious threat and have affected the country’s sustainable development.
These women have to make do with the little cowpeas they harvest
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“The situation has been exacerbated by threats and challenges of climate change, including warming, unpredictable rainfall, drought, water shortage, food insecurity, low generation of hydroelectricity, migration and health,” he stated.
Government’s role in stemming climate change
Ghana has played a significant role in climate change adaption and mitigation and ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1995 and the Kyoto Protocol in 2002, which outlines measures to combat the menace of global warming and how to reduce its impact on developing countries.
The government has also formed a National Climate Change Committee that is hosted by the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation. In the committee’s discussion paper; “Ghana goes for green growth,” which was published in November 2010, President John Dramani Mahama, then Vice-President of Ghana and the Chairman of Ghana’s Environmental and Natural Resource Advisory Council, stated, “We cannot allow climate change to pull us back. The only way we can go forward, developmentally, is to address its impact and to seize any opportunities it presents.”
Writer’s email: edmund.asante@graphic.com.gh
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