Speaker urges parties to consider issues of climatic change

Page 16, June 23, 2008
Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah

THE Speaker of Parliament, Mr Ebenezer Begyina Sekyi Hughes has urged political parties to consider the issue of climatic change during their campaigns for the December elections.
He stated that combating challenges of climatic change should be done with concerted efforts and not be viewed as the sole responsibility of the sector ministry and agencies charged with the responsibility.
‘The environment is all we have and we must do all we can to protect it for its continuous use by the present and future generations”, he said.
Mr Hughes was opening a day’s workshop on climatic change for Members of Parliament (MPs) on Saturday.
It was organised by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office of the Administrator of District Assemblies Common Fund to sensitise the participants to issues of climatic change.
He, therefore challenged state and non-state actors dealing with the environment to come up with pragmatic proposals for dealing with challenges of the environment.
Mr Hughes commended the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, local and international agencies which had not relented in their efforts to raise awareness about climatic change.
The Speaker gave the assurance that Parliament was ready to facilitate legislation relating to the climate change as its contribution towards the war against global warming.
In his address, the Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, Mr Kwadwo Adjei-Darko, said although African countries contributed only four per cent to greenhouse effect gas emissions, the continent was particularly vulnerable to climatic change.
He attributed the situation to factors such as widespread poverty, ageing infrastructure, unsustainable use of natural resources, over-dependence on rain fed agriculture and weak governance structures.
Mr Adjei-Darko said that Ghana was currently preparing a national adaptation, which is a process whereby individuals, communities and countries try to reduce potential climate change in eight sectors of the economy.
For his part, the United Nations Resident Co-ordinator in Ghana, Mr Daouda Toure, stated that there was the need for the mainstreaming of climatic change into planning and budgeting of countries.
He expressed the hope that debates generated by the workshop would go a long way in helping to bring climate change issues to the centre of the country’s development strategy and prepare economic actors in taking informed decisions in investing, negotiating with foreign investors and for international arrangements.
Mr Toure congratulated the government for accepting to host an international conference on climate change in August, this year, and expressed the hope that the country would take advantage of the meeting of experts to place the national climate change agenda in the context of its development priorities.
In his remarks, the Majority Leader and Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Mr Abraham Ossei Aidooh, said the workshop was aimed at equipping MPs with enough information on climate change to enable parliamentary committees to be motivated to exercise their oversight responsibility over institutions to minimise the threat of climate change.
The Minority Leader, Mr Alban Bagbin, called for a multi-sectoral approach to the fight against global warming for the achievement of better results.