Climate change centre to be established
The Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations is to establish a National Climate Centre (NCC) to help coordinate and monitor the implementation of climate change programmes and activities in the country.
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The Sector Minister, Mr Akwasi Opong-Fosu, said the centre would also serve as an inter-ministerial oversight institution that would create linkages with various agencies to make for the effective implementation of the various aspects of the National Climate Change Strategy (NCCS).
Additionally, he said the ministry would establish an environmental citizen’s accountability mechanism that would make climate change a shared responsibility.
Mr Opong-Fosu made this known at a national validation workshop organised by the ministry on the National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) in Dodowa yesterday.
The workshop, which brought together experts in climate change sought to finalise the country’s climate change policy and to further give meaning to the resolve to integrate climate change into national development.
That will also enable ministries, departments and agencies, as well as metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, to translate climate change into national and district planning and budgeting.
National Climate Change Strategy
In July 2014, President John Dramani Mahama launched the NCCP as part of the government’s effort to ensure a climate-resilient and climate-compatible economy.
The policy is also to provide strategic directions and co-ordinate issues of climate change in the country, as well as to help it achieve sustainable development through equitable low carbon economic growth.
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The NCCP thus prioritises five main policy areas which are agriculture and food security, disaster preparedness and response, natural resource management, equitable social development and energy and industrial and infrastructural development.
Mr Opong-Fosu said the NCCP would serve as a master plan for climate interventions for the short to medium term.
Collective effort needed
Mr Opong-Fosu said implementing climate change programmes was a complex venture that needed the combined efforts of the government, the private sector and development partners to deal with.
He, therefore, urged all stakeholders and participants at the workshop to contribute immensely to the various discussions to help produce an acceptable document that would be forwarded to Cabinet for approval.