Accra Floods Prove Action on Environment Pressing Than Ever
We in the Ghana Youth Environmental Movement are delighted to celebrate with you World Environment Day 2015; a day commemorated globally with nations making serious commitments to various environmentally friendly projects.
While we at the Ghana Youth Environmental Movement keenly observe activities in other parts of the world in terms of environmental sustainability especially in Africa, we are concerned about how Ghana particularly view issues of the environment in the light of climate change and its impact.
Various actions including plans to establish an Environment and Sustainable Development University in Ghana are indeed positive steps by government in attempt to protect the environment but we cannot be satisfied and rest on our oars especially because we still lag behind in terms of direct policy decisions to tackle the problems of environmental cleanliness and sustainability.
The recent floods in Accra has exposed the suicidal situation we as a people in the country have put ourselves into, having expressed adamancy in keeping our drains free from filth and avoiding littering.
Poor urban planning and building in water ways are all contributory factors to the disaster that has befallen the nation.
We are of deep concern that the worse would happen if we do not check deforestation and fossil fuel combustion in the country as they are key activities that trigger some of the worse effects of climate change that include heavier rainfall causing flooding in major cities, extreme droughts and more frequent heatwaves as being experienced currently in China.
Among other challenges we still face is illegal mining and improper waste management practices in the country.
Recycling is yet to be made ‘practically normal’ and widely accepted as we are firmly glued to land filling in most of our major cities including Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, Takoradi and Sunyani.
We risk losing more lives to cholera and other sanitation related disease because of our failure to value the importance of environmental sustainability.
Successive governments cannot be exclusively faulted for the numerous sanitation challenges Ghana face because it has always taken collective efforts to provide the much deserved better environment.
A clean and safe environment for all is not an ordinary mental picture or thought pattern by an individual, neither is it an utopian society being desired, but a deliberate decision to change our mindsets and actions as a people to save our lives and that of the over 25 million others with whom we share a common destiny in Ghana.
“A nation that does not care about the environment is headed for its own destruction”
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