Development And Climate Change In Ghana

The Role of the YouthKwasi Owusu Gyeabour

5-6th June 2011 – Climate Change Conference- Satya Wacana University - Indonesia

Outline• Introduction to Ghana• Recent Climate trends• Effects of Climate Change on Ghana’s

Development• What Young people can do• What Universities Can do.

Ghana is a Small Peaceful Country in West Africa (Ranking in the top 3 most peaceful countries in Africa year after year) Population: 23,837,000 (2010 estimate)

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GHANA FACTS•Size - 238,500 km² (Encarta 2008)•Geography - low plains•Natural Resources - gold, timber, industrial diamonds, bauxite, manganese, fish, rubber, petroleum, silver, salt, limestone•Forested Area : 24% (Encarta 2008)•Plant Life - African mahogany, cedar or giant cotton plant, savannah grassland and shrubs.Land Fertility - About 57% of the total land area of Ghana is suitable for agriculture (Damptey, 2007)Climate - Tropical - hot temperatures 23°C to 31°CYearly Rainfall - 72 cm (approx) mostly in May and June

Akosombo Dam

The Akosombo Dam on the Volta River in Ghana created Lake Volta, the fourth largest artificial lake in the world. The dam produces electricity for Ghana to use and to sell to neighboring countries

Economic Activities Ghana

Cocoa Farming Cassava Farming

Gold Mining Lumbering

What’s the big deal?

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Recent Climate trends

Temperature• Mean annual temperature has increased by

1.0°C since 1960, an average rate of 0.21°C per decade. The rate of increase has been most rapid in AMJ, a around 0.27°C per decade.

• The rate of increase has generally been more rapid in the northern regions of the country than in the south.

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Recent Climate trends

• Daily temperature data indicate that the frequency of ‘hot’1 days has increased significantly in all seasons except DJF, and the frequency of ‘hot. Nights has increased significantly in all seasons.

• The average number of ‘hot’ days per year in Ghana has increased by 48 (an additional 13.2% of days2) between 1960 and 2003.

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Recent Trend• Average ‘hot’ nights per year

increased by 73 (an additional 20% of nights) between 1960 and 2003.

• The frequency of cold days and nights has decreased significantly since 1960 in some seasons.

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Recent trendsPrecipitation/Rainfall

• Rainfall over Ghana was particularly high in the 1960s, and decreased to particularly low levels in the late 1970s and early 1980s,which causes an overall decreasing trend in the period 1960 to 2006, of an average 2.3mmper month (2.4%) per decade.

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Climate change projections

• According to a newspaper report by the Daily Graphic on February 16, 2008, Ghana must prepare for the worst case climate change scenario in the coming years. Torrential rains, excessive heat and severe dry winds are expected. This is in addition, to more floods and droughts. Just like other countries in Africa, the sustainability of the country’s ecosystems are at risk in areas such as terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, habitats and wildlife.

Effects

Effects of Climate change Effects of Climate change Severe Power cuts due to severe

drought in 2006, since Ghana is a hydro-electric dependant country, the Akosombo dam fell by 41 feet

This meant that several energy dependent companies had to close down, according to the National Labor Department, approximately 33 companies filed for insolvency between September 2006 and March 2007 causing over 2300 workers to lose their jobs

Effects of climate change Effects of climate change ctd.ctd.In the latter part of January 2011 a

load shedding exercise of 35 days was announced by the Volta river authority as a result of the Akosombo dam falling below the normal level due to lack of rainfall c.

Climate change has caused a massive rural to urban migration and this has in turn affected the production capabilities of the Rural communities.

•With the current trend of events Ghana’s dream of becoming an Upper Middle income economy by 2015 is not achievable due to the fact that there’s always the problem of inadequate power supply caused by decreasing rainfall volumes.

•Rural-Urban Migration is causing Ghana to lose its manpower base especially in agriculture since changing climates is discouraging the youth from going into agriculture.

Climate change is not considered an urgent situation by the Government of Ghana as infrastructural development is placed before the issue of climate change.

There is an official government policy but a lack of political will to implement that policy

The Gov’t has ratified international agreements protecting the ozone layer, tropical forests, wetlands and endangered species and officially protects only 4.8% of forests in the country

Government policyGovernment policy

ROLE OF THE YOUTH

Current Youth Action to fight Climate change

• Network of Integrated Youth Association is currently preparing to implement a climate change which is scheduled to start in 2011. The Project dubbed “Face the Change Tour 2011” is a volunteer based project which will organize interesting camping trips to 10 selected communities in Ghana to raise awareness on climate change.

Youth Activities

• Young school children protest to call for government action on climate change.

What Young People Can What Young People Can DoDoGreen Volunteerism – Youth in

Universities can volunteer to plant trees and teach the uneducated people about climate change and its adaptation

Youth – Led Recycling Initiative: University students can recycle their rubbish for re-use especially papers.

What Young People can doWhat Young People can doUniversity students can organize

inter-university Climate change initiative fairs:This fair will allow young men and women in the universities to showcase their projects on renewable energy and effective energy conservation

University students can form National coalitions to push climate change policies to the forefront of National Ploicy

What Young People can doWhat Young People can doConservation and Ecological

volunteers: University students should also form groups to embark on semester break conservation projects in rural communities.

Since Climate change is here to stay, University students should form Climate change Impact response teams to be deployed to assist in relief efforts in case of any climate change related disaster

What Young People can do

• Create Climate change Awareness using ICT

I1. Create Climate Change Pages on Facebook, 2.Tweet or start trend topics on twitter to share knowledge and spread awareness. 3.Post commentary videos of climate change on Youtube

Other SuggestionsOther SuggestionsOther Suggestions Awareness

Students From Satya Wacana University Can use their Blackberry Messengers to create a chain of climate change dialogue all over the World. Simply by requesting their friends to forward the message to those in their BBM dialogue lists and they in turn forwarding it to their contacts.

What Universities can do Universities Must introduce One credit Hour Compulsory Climate change Adaptation course into their first year curriculum; Students must pass it before they graduate

What universities Can Do

• Universities can make profit from climate change initiatives such as Managing a Recycling plant, which would be operated by students.

• Local Universities can host Climate Change webinars using teleconference/Skype in collaboration with Foreign Universities

• Universities must present the government with alternate , sustainable and lucrative projects through research

What Universities can doUniversities must come together to make

Joint Declarations and draw action plans to promote the fight against Climate change

Corporate partnership ventures should be embarked on to support research into climate change; For example Satya Wacana University can partner with PERTAMINA to develop renewable energy etc,

Can I really make a difference?What’s the point?“In general, just under half of the emissions for

which each of us is responsible come from things over which we have personal control, such as how much we drive and fly and how we heat and power our homes. Of the rest, about 25 per cent of the total arises indirectly through powering our workplaces, about 10 per cent comes from maintaining public infrastructure and government, and about 20 per cent is emitted during the production of the things we buy, including food. We can still influence some of these indirect emissions through what we buy - or we could if we had access to the right kind of information - but by and large it makes sense to concentrate on the emissions we can control directly. “ (Pearce, New Scientist, 2007)

Question TimeContact me on Twitter @

kwasiGOFacebook @

http://facebook.com/gyeabour

references

• http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/photo.day.php?ID=130749 slide 10 a

• http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/Death-Toll-in-Ghana-Floods-Up-to-30-96877169.html10b

• http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=202300 12a