House debates climate change
Parliament yesterday joined the debate about climate change with MPs calling on the House to exercise its oversight responsibility by ensuring a climate-sensitive budget capable of dealing with the menace posed by depletion of the ozone layer.
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Members of Parliament (MPs), contributing to a statement made by Dr Nana Ato Arthur, the NPP Member of Parliament for Komenda/Edina/Eguafo/Abirem, were unanimous that there was the need to scale up awareness of climate change issues at the local level.
In his statement, Nana Arthur said a recent study on the economics of climate change in Ghana in December, 2010, concluded that the country had a large existing adaptation deficit that required urgent action.
He indicated that the threat of climate change was manifested in high temperatures than usual, occurrences of severe and frequent periods of droughts and the increase in frequency and scale of flooding and the increase of erratic rainfall.
Nana Arthur added that a communication by Ghana to the UN in February, 2011, indicated that temperatures had warmed by one degree Celsius over the past 30 years.
"What is astonishing is that this same report highlights that there will be warming for all regions in Ghana, particularly the three northern regions with increases of between 2.1 degrees Celsius to 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2050."
He enumerated the potential consequences of these climate changes on agriculture and the environment to include crop failure, fish stock decline, biodiversity and mass extinctions, deforestation, land degradation and excess demand for water resources.
"Mr Speaker, the climate change by itself has the potential not only to completely undermine all the efforts at environmental conservation and improving agriculture but also to substantially threaten human welfare, even if one restricts one's view of human welfare to the very narrow realm of consumption of goods and services."
Nana Arthur indicated that the change in climate would have social-economic consequences for Ghanaians, given the high dependence on agriculture, particularly rain-fed agriculture, as far as the country's export earnings and farmers ‘and fisherfolk’s livelihood were concerned.
Perceptions of Ghanaians
Nana Arthur said at the national level, the perception of climate change was deemed to be very technical, and it might be comparable to the use of computers two decades ago.
He explained that the government's response to climate change had been highly visible at the international level.
Nana Arthur added the perception of climate change at the local level was quite anecdotal and poorly understood.
He explained, for example, that according to the 2009 BBC World Trust "climate change hearing in Ghana", the changes in global weather patterns and other consequences were attributed to the "will of God". In fact the claim is that "the end is near".
Parliament's role
Nana Arthur suggested that MPs needed to monitor the implementation of national budget to ensure that expenditures made complied with the provisions made with respect to issues on climate change.
He stated that the business as usual strategy of various institutions linked to climate change implementation policies needed to change.
Nana Arthur also called for the mainstreaming of climate change adaptation on political platforms that ultimately reflected into national development strategies.
He said recognising the scale and urgency of the development challenges that would befall Ghana as a consequence of predicted climate change was clear that the country had neither the resources nor the time to tackle them separately or consecutively.
Tackling them jointly was really not the option but of utmost necessity, he said adding that MPs needed to acquire the needs capacity to enable them to incorporate them into their agenda during interactions with their constituents.