The Friends of the Nation (FoN), a socio-environmental advocacy non-governmental organisation (NGO), has held a key stakeholder dialogue to chart a common path towards addressing climate change issues in the Shama District of the Western Region.
The dialogue, a follow-up to previous sessions, was attended by representatives including youth groups, farmer groups, traditional leaders, heads of institutions and the media within the district.
It formed part of FoN’s ‘Climate Media Collaborative for Economic Justice and Community Rights’ Project, being supported by Oxfam and Ford Foundation, to discuss pertinent climate change issues with a focus on sand mining and quarrying in the Shama area.
The Project sought to build communities’ climate resilience by creating awareness on the devastating impact of climate change and how stakeholders could collectively mitigate it.
Participants recommended some action plans to influence policy direction on climate change adaptation strategies and the need for stakeholders to strictly enforce environmental protection laws.
They also urged citizens to embrace renewable energy technologies and plant trees to replace lost ones.
Mr William Augustine Dankyi, a Project Officer at FoN, said the engagement was to seek stakeholders’ input to facilitate national discussions on human activities that contributed to climate change, with particular focus on sand mining and quarrying within some urban areas.
Those activities were a major concern in the Shama District, which aggravated climate change, he said.
“As a people, our actions contribute to climate change and we all have our individual responsibilities to play to mitigate the devastating impact on our livelihoods and our existence on earth.”
Mr Anthony Quaicoe, the Development Planning Officer, Shama District Assembly, said sand winning and quarrying were negatively impacting farming activities and the livelihoods of the people.
However, the Assembly had put in place strict mechanisms to regulate those activities to reduce their contributions to climate change.
Mr Kwadwo Opoku-Mensah, the Deputy Director, Western Regional Office of the Environmental Protection Agency, said a National Climate Change Policy and Adaptation Plan had been developed to check and mitigate the devastating effects of climate change on livelihoods in the country.
GNA