By Joyce Gyekye
Forty CSOs in environment have had their capacities enhanced on the genesis of climate change, international conventions, national policies on climate change, and how to source global funding for the Rio Convention, which are being implemented in Ghana’s Nationally Determined Contributions, NDCs.
The participants included CSOs working on biodiversity, clean cook, land degradation, and climate change.
At the first of three trainings in Dodowa in the Dangme West District of the Greater Accra region, the Acting Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Authority, Prof. Nana Ama Browne Klutse, called for more collaboration from CSOs with state institutions in implementing the NDCs, given that the CSOs interact more with people at the local level.
She acknowledged the importance of enhanced education for the CSOs since the county’s environmental issues are numerous, and CSOs stand a better chance of influencing behavioral through their advocacy role.
Prof. Browne Klutse announced that the EPA is putting in place measures to help ban single-use plastics, saying, “These plastics are causing so much to the environment and human health”.
On one of Ghana’s biggest environmental issues, illegal mining popularly called “Galamsey” which is affecting water bodies, food production and health, the Acting Executive Director of the EPA said the “World Bank is assisting the Authority to reclaim degraded lands in Northern Ghana with a pilot project which has just concluded”.
The CEO of HATOF Foundation, Dr. Samuel Dotse, took participants through the Rio Conventions, UNFCCC, CBB, and UNCCD. He said within the climate financing architecture “Because we are dealing with a multilateral process, the conventions have made provision for which multilateral funds have been established, and one of them is the Green Climate Fund”.
He noted, “The money, after it has been mobilised, is not just going to be distributed among the countries, there are eligibility criteria which you have to go through in order to qualify to receive the money.”
A participant from KASA Initiative, an umbrella organisation of CSOs, Ransford Sackey, lauded the training, saying most of these workshops that help CSOs to develop proposals are very abstract to the international fund. He said, “with this particular program, we are able to relate because HATOF has been teaching us the principles when it comes to GCF, how to write proposals to meet GCFs criteria.”
For more than two decades, Ghana has received international support for capacity-building initiatives to implement the Rio Conventions, but most of them focus on government institutions, leaving CSOs under engaged.
HATOF began its work with a readiness program in October 2022 by engaging a consultant to assess the readiness of CSOs in implementing the Rio Convention. The assessment revealed extensive lack of knowledge among CSOs; hence, the project for which HATOF Foundation won the grant, to educate the CSOs on the conventions and how they can write bankable proposals for funding. The grant for the project, about 443 thousand dollars from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), was facilitated with the support of the Ministry of Finance to implement the country’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
HATOF Foundation
HATOF Foundation is a Ghanaian-based international environmental NGO promoting sustainable development and human well-being through policy advocacy and influence, capacity building, technical assistance, and project development, as well as project development and management in climate and environmental sustainability. The foundation fosters collaboration and drives climate action through partnerships and training initiatives.
