Ghana’s President Mahama wants effective coordination of climate change initiatives
Government is to establish Development, Monitoring and Disclosure System (DMDS) in order to develop comprehensive vision for all climate change-related activities.
President John Dramani Mahama who announced this said there were various initiatives in relation to climate change in Ghana without effective coordination.
He said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Ministry of Environment Science and Technology (MEST) would collaborate to establish the DMDS.
President Mahama made the observation in an address read for him by Ms. Sherry Ayittey, Minister of Environment, Science and Technology at the Fifth Annual Environmental and Natural Resources Summit in Sunyani.
It is being organised by the EPA, Forestry Commission (FC) and Minerals Commission under the auspices of MEST and Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources (MLNR) on the theme: “Illegal Mining and our Environment”.
The summit is sponsored by the European Union (EU), the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the World Bank under their budgetary support for the Natural Resources and Environmental Governance (NREG) programme in Ghana.
The five-day summit being attended by 185 participants from stakeholder ministries and their sector commissions, agencies and departments is to identify effective ways of managing the country’s natural resources for sustainable development.
Other participants include civil society groups such as WACAM, Forest Forum and Civic Response, environmental and human rights advocacy organisations under the coalition KASA.
In addition, the summit is a platform to discuss pertinent environmental issues, especially cross-cutting ones for common targets on how to resolve environmental and natural resource problems in Ghana.
President Mahama said such collaboration would foster synergies, help to avoid duplication of initiatives and ensure consistency with national development planning.
He said other key areas yet to be explored were the Payment for Environmental Services (PES) and potentials for assessing Carbon Credits from Green Funds and Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM).
President Mahama announced that preparations were underway for the establishment of National Natural Capital Accounting System, as an inventory of all “initiatives” in the country to assess existing capacity that would be harmonised for calculating the cost of environmental degradation.
He expressed the hope that these activities would immensely ensure the integration of environmental consideration into policy formulation and implementation across the different sectors whilst they would also contribute greatly to sustainable environmental governance.
Mr Mike Hammah, Minister of Lands and Natural Resources said the unprecedented high price of gold had given rise to increased illegal small scale mining including foreign participation in the country.
However, he said, sustainable solution could only be in a local context since the activities were localised and started on small basis.
The Sector Minister, therefore, called on all stakeholders, traditional authorities, land owners, farmers and opinion leaders to desist from illegally apportioning land for illegal mining but rather work with regulators to grant mining licences to ensure that the required benefits were derived.
Mr Hammah announced that the revised Forest and Wildlife Policy had been discussed at Cabinet for adoption and implementation.
“The focus of the new policy is to move away from consumptive values of the forest (timberisation) to non-consumptive values of the forest including the promotion of ecotourism, biodiversity conservation and watershed management,” Mr Hammah added.
Source: GNA