Northern Ghana hit by climate change

The sun is shining and the harmattan wind, a dry and dusty west African trade wind, is sweeping across the streets of Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region, 658 kilometers north of Accra. It is just the beginning of harmattan, one of the three major seasons in the northern part of the west African country. The other two seasons are raining and heat. Baba Musah, a resident who has lived and worked in this area for just seven months, said that temperatures during these seasons had been very high and the region had experienced torrential rains, excess drought and "too much heat", close to 45 degree Celsius in recent years. What he said shared the worries among participants of a day- long workshop, jointly organized by the British Council Office in Ghana and World Bank on climate change and its impacts earlier this month. Dr Richard W. Spinrad, assistant administrator at the office of the London-based Oceanic and Atmospheric Research of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the seminar that, due to human activities such as industrialisation, had changed the natural environmental pattern which had led to many negative impacts including rising level of the sea. Spinrad declared that global statistics showed that sea level was estimated to rise by 0.18 meters to 0.59 metres by 2100 with the east coast of Ghana particularly at risk of flooding, leading to shoreline recession and significant land lost. The Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions were devastated in 2007 and 2010 by marauding flood waters, demonstrating how climate change undermined development investments. The disaster affected 317,000 people while 1,000 kilometers of roads were destroyed, 210 schools and 45 health facilities damaged and 630 drinking water facilities devastated or contaminated. Direct emergency funding was valued at 25 million U.S. dollars. Statistics from the National Disaster Management Organization showed that the flood that struck the Central Gonja district of the Northern Region in 2010 was the first catastrophic environmental calamity which displaced 33, 305 people and affected 8, 811 households. About 26,822 acres of farmlands were submerged, 65 schools collapsed, 15 boreholes were destroyed and 1,109 livestock were carried away in the flood. The flood ushered the affected community residents into hunger, poverty and homeless and brought economic activities in the area to a halt. Issifu Salisu Be-Awuriba, Central Gonja district Chief Executive, told Xinhua that the district needed over 3 million U.S. dollars to resettle the displaced persons and to rebuild the collapsed school buildings. However, in other area of the north region, farmers worried about their losing crops that were severely hit by drought or low rains. Ibrahim Asigri, 45, a farmer at Savelugu, also a district in the Northern Region, said that he had to abandon his four acres of rice farms because of the drought. "As at now, the rice should have flowered and ready to mature but the situation is different so I just have to forget about it," he said. Available figures indicated that there has been no consistent rainfalls in the region for the past seven years. Joseph Yeng Faalong, a director under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture of the Northern Region, advocated for a solution to adopte and mitigate climate change effects through a joint effort on education. Farmers should adopte modern farming methods instead of the traditional ones which were no more efficient, he said.