<<Print>>

Mr John Pwamang, the Acting Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has expressed optimism that Ghanaian negotiators at COP24 will win more bilaterals leading to accessing more resources to fund climate change adaptation actions.

    He said such resources were critical to enable Ghana to implement its 31 major actions in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that had already been well laid up.

    “We are looking at whatever we can harness in terms of these negotiations, which will help us to implement our NDCs in sectors such as forestry, agriculture, and energy-low carbon electricity generation” he said.

    In an interview with the Ghana News Agency at the on-going 24th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) at Katowice in Poland, Mr Pwamang said Ghana was looking forward for more resources from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to enable “us run some projects just as other African countries have been doing.”  

    He said Ghana had not benefited much from the GCF, hence, the Ghanaian negotiators at the Conference, who brought on board a lot of issues on climate change mitigation and adaptation, were expecting better responses from the negotiations.

     Mr Pwamang, however, emphasised the need for Ghana to harness its private sector investment to attract more resources from the global fund to help the country roll out it climate adaptation actions. 

     He said at the ongoing COP, the developed countries were interested in mitigation issues because they were technology-based and a source of businesses.

     “But we in Africa are more into the adaptation because we think that is where we can make better impact on our way of life. As you know, we are not emitting much but we are actually suffering the effects of climate change,” he said.

     The EPA Boss said COP24 was the last meeting for the global community to actually plan for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, which came out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with principles that the world had to use to ensure the Agreement was implemented.

    He described Ghana’s participation in the COP24 as very critical because the country, as part of the global community, needed to be part of the global negotiations expected to come out with the implementation plan for the Paris Agreement, which would roll out in 2020.

    “All the critical sectors in Ghana, made up of Transport, Energy, Agriculture, Environment, among others are all are presented at the COP to ensure that all the nation’s implementation interest were taken into considerations at the global conference,” he explained.

    According to Mr Pwamang, “when Ghana enter 2020, the 10 year period between 2020 and 2030, we can also make impact in trying to get our NDCs fully implemented to ensure that we also meet the provisions of the Paris Agreement, and then also to ensure that we develop as a country”.

    He said the Government’s policies like the Planting for Food and Jobs and the One District One Factory were all good programmes that are helping Ghana address climate change impact in one way or the other.

    The 13-Day event, that closes on Friday, December 14, is being attended by more than 20,000 delegates from 190 countries.

    It is on the theme: “Changing Together”.

    The aim of COP24 climate summit is to agree on a dense set of technical rules to underpin the Paris Agreement’s goals for limiting global warming to well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C, by the end of the century.