Courts urged to take environmental offences seriously
A Justice of the Supreme Court, Mr Justice Joseph Bawah Akambah, has stressed the need for the courts to take environmental offences seriously and apply the necessary penalties against offenders.
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He noted that the impunity with which the environment was being destroyed as a result of human activities was beyond comprehension and said the courts had a crucial role to play in arresting the canker.
"We should not take environmental offences as petty offences,” he said while addressing a day’s workshop on the environment and its related issues that need timely legal intervention for justices of the High Court in the northern sector of the country.
The workshop was organised at Ejisu in the Ashanti Region last Saturday by the Judicial Training Institute of Ghana, in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Speaking on the topic, “Practical scenarios/case study”, Mr Justice Akambah said if care was not taken, a major environmental catastrophe could befall the nation in the not-too-distant future.
Citing expert findings, the Supreme Court judge said illegal mining, illegal logging and the erection of telephone masts in residential areas were some of the serious issues that threatened the environment and, to a larger extent, the lives of the people.
“Go to some of the communities today and what you see are mass destruction of farms and the pollution of water bodies through galamsey. And we are all looking on unconcerned while these negative activities go on, as if we are content with the situation,“ Justice Akambah said.
Today, he said, a number of communities could not drink from water sources and aquatic life was lost in the rivers because of illegal mining.
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The Supreme Court judge noted that Ghana’s oil production could bring untold hardships to the people if the environmental impact was not tackled with all seriousness.
On that score, he stressed the need for Ghana to learn lessons from Nigeria and other oil-producing nations where oil discovery had brought in its wake some negativities relating to the environment.
As judges, he said, they needed to be abreast of the laws and regulations relating to the environment, so that they could expeditiously deal with cases that came before them.
Mr Ebenezer Appah-Sampong of the EPA Headquarters, who also spoke at the workshop, shared with participants some of the emerging environmental challenges that negatively affected current and future generations.
Among them were illegal mining and logging, poor agricultural practices and pollution of the environment.
Stressing that the issue of the environment had become a global issue, he delved into worldwide environmental issues and the implication for Africa.
Other speakers at the workshop were Mr Justice Marful-Sam, a Justice of the Court of Appeal; Mr Justice Abdallah Iddrisu, a Justice of the High Court, and Dr Peter Ampere, a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana.