NGO wants implementation of Polluter Pays Principle

The government has been urged to implement the ‘Polluter Pays Principle’ to ensure a safer environment.

An environmental non-governmental organisation, Friends of Rivers and Water Bodies, which made the call on the occasion of the observation of this year’s World Environment Day, expressed concern that the policy had remained on the drawing board for too long with waste generators having a field day, while the pollution of the environment continued with impunity.

The Polluter Pays Principle is the globally accepted practice where those who cause pollution bear the costs of managing it.
Although the policy found place in the government’s environmental policy, its implementation had been a problem.

Free taxpayers
The President of Friends of Rivers and Water Bodies, Nana Dwomoh Sarpong, questioned why the taxpayers’ money should be used to clean the streets while the polluter was allowed to go free.
“We have so many laws in the status books but we are not enforcing them; we cannot do the same thing and expect different results,” he said.

Ghana, he noted, was one of the first signatories to the Kyoto Protocol which said no one should deny the other person downstream of water.
“But what we are doing in this country is the opposite. In other places, they adhere to that; you can't deny somebody downstream water while you have signed the protocol,” Nana Sarpong observed.
He posited that democracy without the enforcement of laws was not democracy because democracy itself hinged on the rule of law.

Describing the observation of the World Environment Day in Ghana as “a sad day for me”, the NGO’s president said that was basically due to the destruction of water bodies.
Nana Sarpong also spoke against building on watercourses, saying that had been the cause of flooding in many areas.
“Ghanaians should note that environmental protection is the duty of all,” he stressed.

Media commended
Nana Sarpong commended the media for supporting environmental protection, especially the fight against ‘galamsey’, and urged them to do even more.
He suggested to the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies to make by-laws that would make every landlord plant a tree in front of his/her house.
“This law operates in some African countries, including Kenya and Uganda, and the law is working,” he said.