Collaborative approach required to combat climate change – Dr. Kwaku Afriyie

The Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Kwaku Afriyie says the fight against climate change requires a collaborative and holistic approach to achieve its targets.

Ghana is a signatory to the Paris Agreement, Kyoto Protocol, and other international treaties and conventions.

Dr Kwaku Afriyie said his outfit is determined to implement those protocols but will have to conduct “policy analysis” as these agreements have “certain legislations, laws and regulations that must be passed”.

Dr Afriyie in his address to the press said: “Climate change is a holistic matter, and we have to collaborate, and integrate our action nationally and internally and even in the West Africa sub-region so that we will get the impact that we want. So it is a very big undertaking and this Ministry intends to coordinate all.”

He said some of the protocols require collaboration among sector institution. The Minister said this is evident in the agric sector.

“For example, Ghana is migrating towards agroforestry as far as the cocoa sector is concerned.  We are repairing the forest that was degraded, that is why we are doing the modified Tonja system to make sure the forest is repaired. Also, on the coastal belt issue, we are dealing with them; I am talking about the Ramsar sites [which have been evaded] and others,” he said.

“More so, the benchmarks of the National Determined Contributions [NDCs] guides the Ministry to evaluate Ghana’s carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases… in line with our industrial policy. This will translate into specific industry especially the big polluters. We will apply the law strictly through the EPA among others,” he added.

The President of Climate Change and Local Governance-Africa, Kofi Don-Agor said that the group comprising journalists focuses on capacity building and integrating climate solutions into local development.

“We are ready to collaborate with the Ministry as media practitioners, so we can disseminate information to our people at the local level. What we have identified is that, most of the time, we talk about climate matters with big words, but our people at the local level don’t understand these words.”