Take interest in issues of environment (Friday, November 6, 2009)

THE Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Ms Sherry Ayittey, has called on the international community to focus more attention on issues of the environment and deal resolutely with challenges such as gas emissions which threaten human existence.
Addressing participants at an international workshop organised in Accra yesterday, the minister said the global problem of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions and the resultant consequences of floods and droughts which faced the world in recent times called for immediate action to check them.
Participants from Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia and Zambia are discussing the theme, "Removing Barriers to Invasive Plant Management in Africa", at the four-day workshop organised under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
Ms Ayittey said the current potential impact on invasive aquatic species and the barriers militating against their management in Africa had been the motivation behind the development of the UNEP and the GEF.
She said, for example, that the menace of water hyacinth to water resources and fisheries had resulted in over a 100 per cent reduction in fish catch over the past few years and the abandonment of entire villages by both fishermen and farmers due to dwindling or lack of economic opportunities.
"This is particularly true of residents of villages and hamlets along the Tano Lagoon and the river complex on the south-western border with Cote d’Ivoire. Water hyacinth has also blocked the navigation paths of boats plying the Oti arm of the Volta Lake," she explained.
She expressed her gratitude to the UNEP and the GEF for the workshop, sating, “It is about food security and poverty reduction, about economic development and the health of especially impoverished citizens of our countries. It also addresses the pertinent issues of global warming and its repercussion on bio-diversity, without which we cannot survive as humans."
In her welcoming address, the Deputy Director-General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr Mamaa Entsua-Mensah, said the invasion of alien species and their associated problems had become a reality in most countries requiring urgent and pragmatic action to fight to save and protect the environment, ecosystems and indigenous bio-diversity before the situation got completely out of hand.
She said in Ghana, records indicated that water hyacinth and kariba weed had adversely affected fisheries and water supply in the Tano River and Lagoon Complex, as well as the Volta River System.
“Ghana has, over the years, been battling with the challenges posed by these invading alien species and we acknowledge the unflinching support the UNEP and the GEF have given us to address the problem,” she stated.