Indian delegation in for exchange programme

A delegation from India’s State of Odisha Pollution Control Board is in the country to share knowledge and learn from Ghana’s Environmental Performance Rating and Public Disclosure Programme on managing industrial pollution.

The programme, also known as AKOBEN, involves assessing the environmental performance of mining and manufacturing operations, using a five-colour rating scheme. 

Based on their day-to-day operations, the companies are rated from excellent to poor, using the colours gold, green, blue, orange and red.

These ratings are disclosed annually to strengthen public awareness of environmental activities in the respective communities.

Courtesy call

The World Bank, under the South-South Co-operation programme and the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI), is facilitating a five-day meeting between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and India’s State of Odisha Pollution Control Board, as an exchange programme.

Speaking in Accra during a courtesy call on him by the delegation, the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Mr Mahama Ayariga, said Ghana’s AKOBEN initiative had made companies to be conscious of their activities and their impact on the environment within which they operated.

He said companies strived to meet the standard because consumers were influenced by the results of the assessment. 

Mr Ayariga said continuous innovations were needed to reduce the cost of sustaining the environment because it was expensive to pursue such an endeavour.

He stressed that  there would be an exchange of knowledge between officials of the two bodies, guidance and mentoring, lessons and replicable solutions for the environment.

Bilateral relations

On bilateral relations between India and Ghana, Mr Ayariga said the two countries had a long standing relationship, adding that: “We have agreed on some global issues.”

He said the meeting was another opportunity for the two countries to strengthen their relationship and explore other ways of working together.

The Development Commissioner of the Planning and Co-ordinating Department of Odisha State, Mr Upendra Nath Behera, said the adoption of the Akoben rating system would enhance his mineral-rich country’s environmental regulation system.

He said the delegation would also learn how to politically manage such an environmental disclosure programme from the EPA.