Vice President, Economics, Research and Strategy, Development Bank of Ghana (DBG), Dr. Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong, has said that environmental sustainability can be achieved through concerted efforts from stakeholders, including chiefs.
According to him, there is tension between climate change and sustainable development as temperature levels in the world keep rising due to nefarious activities – pollution, especially from plastics and forest degradation by individuals.
Based on this, it is prudent for the environment to be protected at all cost; otherwise, it will be very difficult for the next generation to survive.
“Our environment needs to be protected, or else all of us will not survive. This puts a lot of responsibility on all of us to do the little that we can do to support institutions that are set up to help deal with climate change,” he said at a sustainable development conference organised by the Osu Mantse’s office, dubbed: ‘Sustainable Ghana’.
He added that all the citizenry, including government, traditional authorities, heads of households among others, must be held accountable for how they treat the environment, and also do what is expected of them to safeguard the environment for posterity.
Dr. Opuni-Frimpong further made a clarion call for all deviants to be sanctioned appropriately in order to get them to act in ways that will sustain the community.
“Leadership matters, and not just leadership at the level of government, but also at the local and even households’ level. Personally, we are accountable for the things we do. And why do we allow plastics which take about a thousand years before they decompose around.
“There is a need for policy change because elsewhere, you need to pay for even paper bags. But here in Ghana, everything is plastic and it all contributes to global warming. The sanctions are no more so, we do whatever we like and that is where personal accountability comes in and this is practical,” he said.
“We have to do the needful to safeguard the prosperity and sustainability of our own people because if we mess up, there will be nothing more to do. Sometimes you need to crack the whip to be able to sustain the community. We need to change our mindset in the way we do our things. We should not give up hope. We should go back to the roles; as parents, children and citizens, what examples are we setting for them,” he emphasised.
For his part, the Osu Mantse, Notse Professor Nii Nortey Owuo IV, stressed the need for the country to take the lead in sub-Saharan Africa to move to green energy sources and other climate sensitive technologies.
“From the cars we drive to the houses we live in, there are good people working on adapting them to a new sustainable way of life. This is the future. From sustainable and green energy sources to climate sensitive construction and technology, more and more people are realising this shift.
Ghana has to take a leading position in this movement in the sub-region, as well as throughout the continent. At various fora, we, as a country, have committed toward the sustainable development goals of the United Nations.
We must now put our words to actions. We must make sustainability a factor in every national discussion. After all, our indigenous cultures put a high premium on sustainability. We must show the world we have been a climate conscious society for more than a millennium,” he emphasised.
