A Climate Smart Agriculture document has been developed since 2015 in Ghana. As part of the role out plans, there is the need to sensitize key players in the Agriculture sector. This will enable them to be abreast with and align them with the content of the document, in order to work within the strategies outlined in the document to make Agriculture climate responsive.
It is against this backdrop that, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture with support from the German International Cooperation GIZ a development agency, have organized a day’s sensitization workshop for stakeholders, particularly Department of agricultural staff, Non Governmental Organization (NGOs), and Civil Society Organization (CSOs) who are into Agriculture.
Ghana has developed its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to Green House Gas Emissions Reduction (GHGER), it is a legally binding document that was reached at the Paris Congress of Parties at the United Nations Federal Conventions of Climate Change PCPUNFCC.
At this convention, every country was expected to develop a document indicating how much contributions it will make toward reducing green house emissions, so that globally by 2050, temperatures will not exceed 1.5 degrees.
As a country, the NDCs have been developed and the sectors captured in it include Agriculture. An implementation plan for the agriculture component has also been drawn for the NDCs.
Speaking to Radio Ghana, the Environmental, Land and Water management Unit, Directorate of Crop Services Ministry of Food and Agriculture Kingsley Kwako Amoako indicated that, though there were some actions implemented that tried addressing climate change, there was no national document or strategy that supported those actions.
Initially people thought climate change was an environmental issue so other sectors were not concern, until it dawn on the government of Ghana that it is a developmental issue that affects every facets of the economy; energy, industry, waste management, Agriculture and therefore needed to develop a policy document to guide the actions of the various sectors to be responding to the climatic changes that are being recorded across the world.
Mr. Amoako stated that, Agriculture was identified as one of the vulnerable areas of climate change and the policy document also identified some high level actions that need to be undertaken, to make agriculture resilient to climate change.
He said, the policy document became a tool for all sectors, to develop strategies to operationalized the policy document and to build resilience to climate change.
For the Agriculture sector, based on the policy, Ghana developed the Climate Smart Agriculture and food security action plan to be implemented from 2016 to 2020.
This he said Ghana can now boast a strategic document which is backed by a national policy, ensuring that steps are taken to build a resilience of the Agriculture sector to climate change so that there can be food security and poverty reduction.
Mr. Amoako gave an analytical view regarding government policy vis-a-vie the annual torrential rains and the spillage of the Bagre Dam that goes waste as against the national action plan of Agriculture.
The Regional Director of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture Upper East Francis Enock said threw more light on the relevance of the workshop and for Agricultural sustenance.
Story by : Emmanuel Akayeti
