The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to embark on a nationwide awareness creation drive after the ongoing 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26).
The public education campaign which would target the local communities aimed at ensuring that the citizenry understands the severity of climate change to enable them to contribute effectively towards addressing it.
The Executive Director of the EPA, Dr Henry Kokofu told the Ghanaian Times on the sidelines of the COP 26 underway in Glasgow, Scotland that many people were oblivious of the phenomenon; therefore they were either engaged in activities that worsen the situation or were simply unconcerned.
He said as the government mobilises funds to implement its nationally determined contribution (NDC) on climate change alongside impressing on the G-20 countries to fulfill their financial obligation to the fight, the citizenry had a crucial role to play.
“What can we do in our own small way to contribute to the NDC? We will get back home and deepen the conversation. This time, not in our offices in Accra but we will get to the regions, districts, and the villages,” he said.
DrKokofu said the EPA had held discussions with a substantial number of Members of Parliament who are COP 26 participants to help reach out to their constituents.
“We are going to take them through the rudiment of environmental issues that are cropping up and equip them with knowledge and facts, figures and all the tools that are needed so they can go back to their people and together, we create awareness on climate change,” he said.
According to the EPA boss, school children, the academia, the informal sector, journalists, politicians and all manner of people would not be left out because they have the obligation as citizens to take this global issue seriously and contribute towards the fight.
“Deforestation has to be checked, this almighty and unsavory galamsey( illegal mining) must stop at once otherwise it will draw back our efforts. So we appeal to all to follow what is going on globally so we contribute our quota towards it,” he said.
More than 30,000 delegates and 125 world leaders from across the globe have converged to discuss climate change on the theme ‘Keeping 1.5 alive; ensuring it is still possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees,”
Co-hosted by the United Kingdom and Italy, it marks six years since 196 parties at COP 21 held in Paris in 2015, adopted the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change that came into force in 2016.
Under the agreement, all parties including Ghana are required to have NDCs to combat climate change, adapt to its effects, and achieve the common goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
