President Akufo-Addo speaking at the orientation ceremony
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has maintained that although Ghana is very much aware of the impact of Climate Change and the need to help curb it, it is equally important that the development of the country is protected.
“Ghana acknowledges the importance and effects of Climate Change, and the urgent need to combat it, and we acknowledge equally the importance of protecting our development. We believe that a balance must be struck and maintained between our social, economic and environmental imperatives,” he said.
The President said this yesterday when he delivered Ghana’s statement at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP 26, currently ongoing in Glasgow, Scotland.
President Akufo-Addo stated that Climate Change is the greatest threat to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals, as it has enormous impact on the fundamentals required for survival on earth.
“Even though we, in Africa, are the least of the contributors to this phenomenon, responsible for less than four percent of the global volume of carbon emissions, we suffer the most because our agrarian and resource-driven economies are peculiarly susceptible to the effects of climate change, and our capacity to withstand its shocks is weak,” he said.
Economic drivers
He said even though agriculture, water, energy, and the extraction of mineral resources are essential drivers of developments in Africa, they are characteristically sensitive to changing climate.
The African Development Bank has said Africa will need some US$3 trillion “in mitigation and adaptation by 2030” to enable her implement nationally determined contributions. The President believes that the question of financing Africa’s commitments naturally arises from this.
“The Almighty has blessed our lands with abundant natural resources, and it would be wholly unfair for the world to demand that Africa abandons the exploitation of these same resources needed to finance her development, and help us to cope better with the threat of climate change, at a time when many countries on the continent have only just discovered them,” he said.
According to him, the development and industrialisation of the wealthy nations of today were also hinged on the exploitation of their natural resources.
Africa, the President said, is naturally very disappointed by the failure of the wealthy nations to honour their commitments of making available one hundred billion dollars (US$100 billion) annually to the poorer countries to assist the continent in the fight against climate change, and by the unavailability of the technology transfer that will help Africa find sustainable ways of charting a path out of this existential crisis.
“Those same nations are, however, insisting that we abandon the opportunity for rapid development of our economies. That would be tantamount to enshrining inequality of the highest order, a totally unacceptable conclusion,” he added.
He stressed: “We must find a solution that is equitable and fair; a solution that levels the playing field; a solution that recognises the historical imbalances between the high emitters and low emitters. Ghana, therefore, supports the call for debt-for-climate swaps, which will address a multitude of issues in one fell swoop.”
He, thus, urged world leaders to use COP 26 as “a turning point to create a more prosperous, greener and fairer world, which maintains the balance between the social, economic and environmental requirements of all nations of the earth, rich and poor.”
Protecting forests and oceans
President Akufo-Addo also participated in the World Leader’s Summit on protecting the world’s forests and oceans, held on the sidelines of COP 26.
Describing deforestation and forest degradation as the “greatest challenges to sustainable forest management” in Ghana, he said stated Ghana has, in the course of the last two decades, adopted several policies and programmes, such as National Forest Plantation Development Programme and the Ghana Forest Plantation Strategy, aimed at restoring her lost forest.
“In June this year, I led the entire country, through the Green Ghana Project, to plant over seven million trees, far above the five million we had targeted. Next year, we aim to plant a minimum of twenty million trees, and we have already begun earnest preparations towards this,” he added.
He assured: “From 2024 and beyond, we aim to reduce emissions by some ten million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in the cocoa-forest landscape, through the implementation of the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Programme, one of five ecological landscape-tailored programmes in Ghana’s REDD+ Strategy.”
