ECOWAS to adopt policy on climate change

Daily Graphic (spread) Tuesday, March 16/10

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
AN ECOWAS ministerial meeting on the adoption of a climate change policy for West Africa opened in Accra yesterday, with an assurance by the Ghana government to pursue measures to reduce the environmental consequences of oil production to the barest minimum.
The Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Ms Sherry Ayittey, who gave the assurance, said the government would use appropriate technologies to ensure that carbon emissions and other dangerous greenhouse gases that would be emitted during oil production and processing were captured and stored.
The two-day meeting is expected to adopt a sub-regional document on climate change policy for West Africa.
The minister said with the production of oil, the country would move from being a low to a high carbon emitter, hence the need to take measures to ensure that appropriate environmental management and safety standards were taken.
“Currently, my government has mandated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct a strategic environmental impact assessment of the entire oil production to advise the government on the relevant steps it needed to take to address the adverse effects of oil production on our economy, culture and, above all, our environment," she stated.
Ms Ayitey underscored the need for the sub-regional leaders and policy makers to make reducing the impact of climate change a topmost priority, saying that with the observed trend and projected increases in temperatures and the concomitant decrease in rainfall in all ecological zones, it was certain that water resources and hydro-power production would be seriously affected.
She said climate change was bound to worsen health conditions because it would lead to the incidence of water, air and food-borne diseases.
She said the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December last year did not deliver the fair, equitable and just outcome that was expected by all, adding that African countries would continue to call for a reduction in emissions from developed countries.
Ms Ayittey urged the participants to come up with an effective document, saying that the sub-region must have a broad framework to address all the issues.
For his part, the Commissioner for Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources of the ECOWAS Parliament, Mr Ousseini Salifou, said the meeting was aimed at coming up with a tangible strategy that would enable the sub-region to deal effectively with the issue of climate change.
He said the document, when finalised, would become a pillar and vital tool to deal with various mitigation measures to combat climate change.
He said Africa was united at the Copenhagen summit and that regional leaders would ensure that they continued to present issues with one voice.
He said ECOWAS would continue to support and contribute its quota to ensure that the sub-region experienced minimal effects of climate change.
Mr Salifou gave the assurance that ECOWAS would work closely with relevant agencies and bodies to help find solutions to the negative effects of climate change.
In a related development, African civil society groups yesterday began a four-day meeting in Accra to seek a solution to climate change and protect the continent’s interest in climate matters, reports Mark-Anthony Vinorkor.
Mindful of the fact that climate change is the defining human development and security issue of this generation and that millions of Africans are being forced to cope with the impact of climate change, the organisations are meeting to discuss ways to combine efforts to deal with the problem.
The conference is being organised and sponsored by Friends of the Earth, Ghana.
Ms Ayittey, in a speech read on her behalf, observed that civil society organisations (CSOs) were closer to the grass roots, lived and worked among local populations and so they were in a very good position to bring out the voices from the ground.
She said the ministry considered CSOs as key stakeholders in environmental management in the country working from all levels of policy making, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.
To that effect, she said, the membership of the national Climate Change Committee included non-governmental organisations.
Ms Ayittey noted that a successful outcome from the Copenhagen meeting on climate change would have been deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and adequate funds to address climate change in developing countries, but the summit did not deliver that directly.
“Copenhagen, therefore, fell short of the expectations of many developing countries,” she added.
She said developing countries bore little responsibility for causing the climate crisis but they would be hit hardest, saying that was, unfortunately, the case of the continent.
However, Ms Ayittey added, the political willingness demonstrated by global leaders to be present and attend the conference in Copenhagen clearly showed that there was recognition that climate change was one of the greatest threats to socio-economic development and needed multilateral approach.
“Despite the shortcomings, future negotiations on global climate change debate have not closed but the road will not be easy. That is why there is the need for all stakeholders, particularly Africa, to begin to critically analyse the Copenhagen Accord and its implications as a continent and also as individual countries,” she added.
Mr Mithika Mwenda, the Co-ordinator of the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, said climate change posed the greatest threat to the survival of humanity and the earth.
He noted that efforts to defeat the challenge of climate change were meeting huge boulders of rock and that time was running out for the global community to act.