Copenhagen Climate Conference: Prez Mills to Lead Delegation

The President of the Republic of Ghana, John Evans Atta Mills, will lead the Ghanaian delegation to the much emphasised 15th Session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) penciled for December 7 to 18 in Copenhagen, Denmark to drive home clearly the country’s position on climate change.

President Mills and his delegation would work around the clock at Copenhagen to guarantee a favourable agreement and a declaration from the so called world super powers and industrialized nations.

Ghana’s position would be to stand tenaciously with other African countries to accept without conditions mitigations that would not tie the nation’s hopes and aspiration of becoming an industrialized economy.

This was disclosed by the Deputy Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Dr Omani Boamah, in the early hours of yesterday, in a radio interview with Citi Fm, an Accra based radio station.

According to the Minister, African countries were very much concerned about the safety of their people in the future, that they were ready to charge world economic powers and new developing economies such as China and Indian to come to the ‘party’ and show more concerns about the devastating effect climate change would have on the poor and developing nations. “Polluters must pay for the damage”, he added.

He pointed out that Ghana and Africa would not accept any agreement that would intend to urge her to reduce carbon emission since Africa was not a prime pollutant. He said Ghana, together with Africa, contribute only three per cent of carbon emission so such a call would be floored by the African delegation.

Dr. Boamah, however, stressed that the only thing Ghana and Africa were prepared to do in terms of reducing carbon emissions would be to engage in a massive afforestation projects across the country which would reduce carbon and serve as a back-up protection plan against the devastation of global warming.

Another intervention Ghana has put in place is the newly formed National Committee on Climate Change which would be responsible to the formulation and incorporation of climate change adaptation, mitigation strategies, action plans into various sector and programmes and projects as a dose to immunizing the country against the threats of climate change as well as creating a platform to benefit from climate change adaptation and mitigation funds which had been proposed by developed nations to address climate change challenges.

Ghana, like any other developing nation had experienced and continued to feel the impact of climate change in her socio-economic developments.

It is believed that the 1983 severe drought which resulted in the occurrence of a nationwide wildfire was the first major sign of climate change or global warming.

Subsequently, there was a massive flooding in the Northern, Central and Western Regions in 2007 and recently the resettlement for people of Keta which in all have cost past and the present governments to spend billions of Cedis to compensate for the huge lost of properties, reclamation and resettlement of affected communities.