Help! Our waters are dying
“Boti Falls Is Dead!’ with the strap, ‘Caretakers horrified” is the headline of a story in the Saturday, January 16 edition of the Weekly Spectator and is worrisome. According to the manager of the facility who was horrified and rightly so, there was not a single drop of water from the falls. This, she explained, was as a result of the destruction of the trees that provided shade for the waterfalls. And this was done through bush burning for hunting and illegal logging.
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The story was also accompanied by graphic pictures of the dried up falls and smouldering fire from some of the trees.
The worry is that the drying up of the water falls has implications not only for the water resources which sustains the lives of the endemic species of fauna and flora peculiar to that area and the ecology, the environment and the land around it but also have socio-economic consequences for not only the people of the community and the region in particular, but also the nation as a whole.
Social and economic effects
Socially, it affects the social integration enjoyed by the people of the area when tourists, both domestic and foreign, tour the facility. That integration comes in many forms such as building friendships, educational and social relationships for their mutual benefit.
Economically, for now, it is only the caretakers of the facilities who are horrified because they are directly affected by the loss of the revenue they make from the facility, and the eventual loss of livelihoods of the workers of that facility if the situation persists. The resultant loss of jobs for the workers at the facility has impact on their dependants.
Furthermore, those other people who engage in petty trading of food items, water, crafts, etc will also be affected greatly and may have to relocate their economic activities elsewhere, while those who may not be able to relocate their activities may lose their livelihoods totally, with dire consequences for their families or dependents.
I shudder to think about what such loss of jobs with its resultant swelling of the unemployment ratings and the indirect implications on the security ratings of the country. This is because some of the youth who would lose their livelihoods and become idle for lack of jobs may find consolation in criminal activities as an alternative to making ends meet.
Meanwhile, the Yilo Krobo Municipal Assembly, under whose jurisdiction the Boti Falls is located, will lose the revenues from the facility and will suffer a shortfall in the level of their revenue collection/generation.
More dead water bodies
As a matter of fact, it is not only the Boti Falls that is dead! There are a number of water bodies/rivers that are dead as there is no aquatic life in them. The state of such water bodies is such that they cannot be used even for agriculture! This can be attributed to the ubiquitous galamsey activities that have pervaded almost all water bodies in this country in the name of employment.
All efforts by state institutions, including the security services, to halt these activities have not yielded the desired results due to the fact that some galamsey activities seem to derive authorisation from ‘some powers’ that be, and some business persons who acquire large tracts of land and employ people to prospect for gold using the unsustainable method of galamsey.
It is a good thing that the Ghana National Fire Service has embarked on a nationwide education and awareness programme to sensitise the public to the do’s and don’ts during this harmattan season.
However, other institutions such as the Water Resources Commission (WRC) have over the years embarked on public awareness and education of various target groups, including metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs), women, media, some community-based organisations, and non-governmental organisations concerning how to manage or utilise our water resources in a sustainable manner to last this generation and for posterity.
They all participate in the workshops, go back home and it’s business as usual.
There is the need to stick to the concept of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), the basis of which is that all the different uses of water are interdependent and must be considered together, such that those who set bushfires to hunt game must realise that their activities would impact on our water bodies and have ripple effects on the socio-economic conditions of the people in the area of their operation.
This also goes for those engaged in galamsey, whose activities have deprived a lot of people in communities access to good quality water for domestic and commercial activities.
The WRC, which was established to manage and regulate water resources in Ghana in a sustainable manner, executes this mandate with the participation of the general public and all identifiable target groups because water resources are finite and ‘Water is everybody’s business’.
Therefore everyone has a role to play in the management of our water resources since we all have a stake in its integrity and wellbeing.
It, therefore, behoves all of us, citizens of dear mother Ghana, to eschew the perception that anything we do not like must be thrown into water to be washed away and change our attitudes for the better towards our water bodies to ensure sustainable management and utilisation of this precious resource which has no substitute.