News:
June 10, 2022
Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, Rt. Hon Alban Bagbin participating in the 2022 edition of Green Ghana Day, a day set aside to plant trees to help recover ghana’s lost vegetation cover said the issue of environmental and climate change challenges should not be left to the scientists alone.
“Climate change is such a huge issue that it requires a strong, concerted, consistent and enduring action by governments”, so says the Australian musician, Peter Garrett. Indeed, these require strong partnerships to forestall the destruction occasioned by environmental degradation”.
He asserts that the issues of the environment and climatic change have become topical in today’s world, not because they are fashionable, but because they are existential issues for you and I, and every living thing on this planet. There is a veritable threat to human existence, which is typified by the impact of environmental degradation on the climate and on our lives, he stated.
According to him speeches like the one he is delivering are the least important, particularly in a situation in which when we look to the south, the sea is rising around us all the time.
Parts of La in the Greater Accra have been completely wiped off the surface of this earth, and it is gradually being forgotten; it was a growing beach community called Bortor, today hardly remember again.
Huge portions of Keta, Dzelukope and allied beach communities and settlements in the Volta Region have been completely eclipsed by tidal waves.
Today residents in these areas point to kilometres into the sea to show where their houses once stood and the European cemetery laid and c cannot afford such occurrences anymore.
“The time to act is now, and that is why we are all here we, need to dial the re-tune knob on climate change”.
He added that his only wish is that today’s annual event will not be for just tree seedlings planting: instead, let make it a tree growing exercise. “Let us look out for the trees we plant and make sure they grow. That is the best way to make progress on climate change”.
You might have noticed that parliament is not sitting to do its daily business today, Members of the House – both the Majority and Minority groups – have travelled to their constituencies, to join their constituents in the tree planting exercise.
This bears testimony to the statement once made by the former President of the United
States, Barack Obama, that “saving the planet isn’t a partisan issue”. No matter what our political persuasion is, it behoves on all Ghanaians to join in the efforts at protecting our environment, and by extension saving our planet.
It is our elders who say that “a toad does not run in the day time for nothing. If you see a toad running during the day time, it means there is something after its life”. The Hon Minister for Lands and Natural Resources has told us specifically, what it is that is after our lives. He took us through the statistics and other data in relation to the threat on our existence.
Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist, said “climate change is more than statistics; it is more than data points; it is more than net-zero targets. It is about the people: it is about the people who are being impacted right now”.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com