Ghana will in March 2019, host the Africa Climate Week, dubbed, “Climate Action in Africa: Navigating Change and Exploring Opportunities.
The United Nations Climate Change and collaborating partners would partner the West African country host the event.
It is expected that over 1,500 climate change stakeholders, made up of civil society actors, knowledge-base institutions, the private sector and the youth, would attend.
Mrs Patricia Appiagyei, Deputy Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, said at the launching of the Africa Climate Week 2019 in Katowice, Poland, that it would enable Africans to share and learn from each other’s climate adaptation best practices, that were peculiar to countries.
Ghana, she said, saw the “Week” as important and had already set up a planning committee that comprises of all the sectors – environment, transport, energy, forestry, tourism and others.
She added that Ghanaians would be exposed to issues of climate change, which were part of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The event would enable Ghana to showcase efforts being made to reduce air pollution.
The Deputy Minister pointed out that the meeting would also help Ghana to compare its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with other countries, while Africa on a whole, would talk about how to place the continent on the implementation agenda.
Mr James Grabert, Director, Sustainable Development Mechanisms, United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, said aside the Africa Climate Week that would be hosted in Ghana, there would also be a Latin American Regional Climate Week and the Asia-Pacific Climate week as well and all were going to be organised in 2019.
The idea was to make sure that “we give a bit more specificity to the ongoing evolution of the implementation of the NDCS in the region”.
“To make sure we create a platform for the countries in the region to really be heard” he added.
He stated that “if we really going to be able to succeed in achieving Paris Agreement, then we have to start listening much closer at the regional and national level and understand their context and their demands and see what we can do to pull together the very stakeholders, and organisations, that need to help deliver at the country level of the Paris Agreement”.
