NGO sensitises Sankana residents to climate change

The Nadowli-Kaleo District Director of Agriculture, Nicholas Tiereke, has appealed to the government and other stakeholders to come to the aid of the farmers in the district to enable them to survive till the next farming season.

He said the farmers needed support both in cash and foodstuffs to survive till the next season, as most of them have lost their crops due to this year’s drought.

He said the weather had negatively impacted farming in the district this year and farmers who planted their crops earlier had lost everything. 

Sensitisation

Mr Tiereke appealed to a week-long sensitisation programme organised by PolicyLink, a nongovernmental organisation, in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for residents of Sankana in the Nadowli-Kaleo District in the Upper West Region.

The programme was to educate the community members on human activities that contribute to global warming and climate change adapting strategies to ensure sustainability.

He said the hardest hit by the droughts were maize, groundnuts, cowpea, soya and Bambara beans farmers in the district.

He explained that the crops that were affected were the staple foods of the people in the district and the majority of the region and as such there would be the need for government intervention for the people to avoid food crisis and ensure food security.

Protection

The Programme Officer for EPA, Kalvin Adongo, asked residents to protect the environment and adopt climate-smart practices in their farming.

He said the current climatic challenges were a result of the consistent cutting down of trees for charcoal and the rampant bushfires.

“These human activities have, over the years, impacted negatively on the productivity of our agricultural land, forest and water resources and resulted in an increase in poverty and low productivity,” he said.

He called on stakeholders and community members to embrace any project and initiative aimed at dealing with the issues of climate change and the environment, by supporting the various departments and agencies.

The Regional Programme Officer at PolicyLink, Issah Toyibu, said the objective of the programme was to educate the farmers to embrace new agricultural technologies and also introduce them to climate-smart agriculture technologies.

"We believe that after the engagement the people would adopt the good practices that we are asking them to practise, to make a positive change," he said.

He was hopeful that at the end of the programme, a number of the farmers would embrace the ideas and technologies to reduce the impact of climate change.