The Environment Report, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), has engaged farmers and opinion leaders at Gambibgo, a community in the Bolgatanga East District of the Upper East Region on climate change issues.
The engagement was to whip up community involvement in discussions and shape action plans on issues of climate change among its members, especially the youth and women.
The programme, supported by the CDD-Ghana and the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Denmark, was under the Connecting Communities, Climate and Politics for tomorrow (3CP for Tomorrow) Project, and created a platform for the participants to question policies and initiatives by the various political parties on climate change.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) after the engagement, Mr Charles Smith, the Project Coordinator of the NGO, said similar engagements would be held in the Northern, Volta, Western, and Ashanti regions.
He said Ghana was experiencing its share of climate change effects which included extreme weather events, rising sea levels, disruptions to ecosystems and livelihoods, loss of biodiversity, health risks, and high agricultural prices due to erratic water supply.
He said the challenges, exacerbated by illegal mining and logging in forest reserves, river pollution, poor agricultural practices, and open waste burning by some companies contributed to climate change and often led to flooding in local communities.
“These issues and challenges undermine Ghana’s ability to achieve set targets for SDG 13, 15 and also six, which are all crucial supporting sectors for our socio-economic development,” he added.
Mr Smith emphasised the need for citizens to protect the environment for posterity, saying Article 36 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, called for the need for the State to protect the environment for posterity, while Article 41 further emphasised the need for citizens to safeguard the environment.
Mr Smith said “We expect the politicians to align all their policies with the Constitution, especially with Chapters five and six.
“We expect them to be hard-hitting on proffering solutions to the challenges we are facing as a country, especially regarding the environment.
We want them to be bold and say that this Legislative Instrument that is seeking to allow people to go into our forest and mine is inimical to society”.
Mr Smith added that plastic waste was of concern to them in both in-land and in the water bodies and called on politicians to introduce policies to ban plastic waste, “These are the key things that we want the politicians to address”.
The Assembly Member for the area, Mr Mahamadu Bukari, said Gambibgo used to be the only area in the district with the biggest dam for irrigation, but due to climate change issues, the dam could not be used for dry season irrigation.
He said the rainfall pattern had affected crop production, especially rice, “This year, I have realised that we may not harvest enough rice from our farms because some of the rice farms have dried up and we don’t know how we are going to salvage the situation”.
Mr Bukari encouraged the community members to plant more trees and appealed to them to properly dispose of waste from their respective homes.
