‘Tackle climate change challenge to agric’

The German Development Cooperation (GIZ) has urged Ghana to prioritise initiatives that will promote the transfer of knowledge and expertise to address the risks posed by climate change to agriculture.

According to the Country Director of the agency, Mr Alan Walsch, climate change had become one of the greatest threats to agriculture for which reason more commitment had to be made to tackle the challenge.

“The government has an agenda to move Ghana beyond aid but Ghana is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector, so a sustainable agricultural sector that can be resilient to climate change is key to realising the Ghana beyond aid agenda,” he said.

Mr Walsch made that observation at the opening of a two-day workshop on the Market-oriented Agriculture Programme (MOAP) and Promoting Integrated Mechanisms for Climate Risk Management and Transfer (ICRM) in Accra last Tuesday.

Initiative

The MOAP and ICRM is a two-year initiative that was piloted by the GIZ in the Zabzugu District in the North East and South Tongu districts of the Volta Region, to build the capacity of local farmers with adaptation technologies that will mitigate the impact of climate change on agriculture.

The programme was started in 2017, in partnership with the ministries of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and Finance, as well as the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO).

The workshop was, therefore, to present the findings and recommended the road map for interventions to the government through the partner ministries for implementation.

National action

The Director of Economic Strategy and Research at the Ministry of Finance, Dr Alhassan Iddrisu, said at the workshop that Ghana had taken some policy steps to support initiatives to deal with climate change issues in the country.

He said 35 programme areas, comprising 24 mitigation and 11 adaptation programmes, had been developed to build the country's resilience to climate change, especially in the agriculture sector.

Dr Iddrisu explained that the adaptation and mitigation programmes were in furtherance of the National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) that was launched in 2014, to provide policy direction that would help to address the risk posed by climate change.

A director at the Directorate of Crop Services of the MoFA, Mr Kingsley Amoako, said the Agriculture Ministry had started incorporating some of the interventions from the ICRM into the country’s agriculture strategy on climate change.