National Climate Change Action Plan Workshop Ends

A day’s sensitisation workshop on the National Climate Change Action Plan – Ghana (NCCP-G) for key stakeholders in the Central Region ended in Winneba on Friday.

The main objective of the NCCP initiative sought to institutionalize effective and efficient adaptation measures, social development and mitigation of climate change effects on agriculture to improve the livelihood of farmers and sustain national food security.

The plan seeks to prioritise essential areas that would be tackled as agriculture and food security, disaster preparedness and response, natural resource management, equitable social development, and energy, industrial and infrastructural development.

The forum sensitize stakeholders on issues concerning the agricultural sector to facilitate and operationalise the NCCP for effective integration of climate change, food and agricultural development policies and programmes for national development.

The programme was attended by various Regional and District Directors, fisheries sector and media and funded by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

Delivering his welcoming address, Mr George Wodzrah, Regional Director of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) said the successful implementation of NCCP remained key to developing the technical, policy and investment conditions to achieve sustainable food security under effective climate management.

He urged them to educate farmers on the causes, mitigating measures and the adverse impact of climate change and their vulnerabilities.

According to him, understanding the sustainability of natural resources including lands, forest, water and genetic biodiversity were significantly influenced by agricultural practices.

Climate change is caused by human activities that led to increasing emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere resulting in problems such as floods, drought and increasing temperature which affected everyone.

Briefing the participants on NCCP, Mr Nathanael Nii-Odai Laryea, Assistant Agriculture Officer, Directorate of Crop Services of MoFA pointed out that climate change was real and increasingly gaining scientific grounds and that it continued to affect agriculture, coastal lands, health, energy and infrastructure in many countries including Ghana.

Therefore, he stated that the NCCP will create public awareness about the dangers posed by climate change to the environment, humans, animals, plant life and survival of the human race.

He said the broad strategies and action plan areas have been developed to guide implementation with various sectors responsibilities for mainstreaming action into policies, particularly agricultural sector response to the climate smart agriculture and food security action plan between 2016-2020.

Mr Laryea identified some crucial challenges to NCCP to include the inadequate financial support from the national kitty in addition to support from the donor agencies and international partners.

He called for more effective and efficient financing models, capacity building, change adaptation into sectorial policies and programmes, awareness creation and strong commitment from by all stakeholders.

Additionally, there should be resilient agriculture and food security systems for all agro-ecological zones with regular capacity building to enhance expertise on smart agriculture with strong multi-institutional support.

GNA