CHAPTER ONE – INTRODUCTION
PRESSURES OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATIONAL RESPONSE IMPERATIVES
Background of Study
In recent times, much attention has been paid to climate change in global discussion discourse. This can partly be attributed to the adverse effects it has across countries. The Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13, therefore, seek to mobilize collective climate action to help address this problem. The impacts of climate change present an imminent threat to most African countries because their economies are susceptible to the changing global climate. Already, Ghana is confronted with many developmental challenges such as poverty, HIV, corruption, unemployment, environmental pollution, rising population, etc. and the repercussions of climate change can compound the severity of the challenges the country is bedevilled with. Moreover, Ghana is particularly in a vulnerable position because its economy is highly dependent on climate- sensitive areas such as agriculture, water, energy, and infrastructure as well as natural-resource dependent livelihoods. The livelihoods of the citizens rely heavily on these natural resources and if they get depleted about 60% of the active population will be without jobs and lose their sources of income (NDPC, 2010).
According to Asante and Amuakwa-Mensah (2015:79), African countries are the least responsible for climate change because their national contributions to the greenhouse gas emissions are less significant in terms of total emissions into the atmosphere. The Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that if emissions keep rising at the
present levels, calamity as biodiversity misfortune and high recurrence of outrageous weather patterns awaits the earth (IPCC, 2014).
Ghana’s recorded total national greenhouse gas emissions were 42.2 MtCO2e (million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) in 2016 (EPA, 2015: 80). The 2016 emissions are 66.4%, 53% and 7.1% more than the previously reported net emission levels for 1990, 2000 and 2012 respectively.
(Figure 1).
Figure 1: Total emissions in Ghana over the years (source: adapted and modified from Ghana’s Fourth National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report)
The manifestations of these emissions in the air include unpredictable rainfall, increase in sea level and extreme weather events (NCCP, 2014:2). The impacts of these manifestations affect several different sectors of the economy. The high-temperature phenomenon can induce a decline in water levels in hydroelectric dams in the country. Similarly, in the agricultural sector, the statistics from
the EPA (2015) shows that more than 5 million smallholder farmers who rely heavily on rainfall are likely to be affected. This is because the farmers are no longer able to adequately plan when to plant in the midst of an erratic rainfall pattern.
Hence, decisive, immediate and effective action must be taken to safeguard Ghana’s long-term developmental aspirations. The country’s current plan for medium-term, ‘’An Agenda for Jobs: Creating Prosperity and Equal Opportunity for All’’ (2018-2021) addresses climate change as a developmental challenge. This is a resolve to mainstream climate change into national, sectoral, regional and local level planning processes (Antwi-Agyei, 2018). Beside the Agenda for Jobs, the National Climate Change Policy (NCCP) and the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are key documents guiding the implementation of climate change interventions in Ghana. The ability to achieve the policy targets depend on the extent of implementation of the identified programmes and access to funding, capable institutions, and appropriate technology
The NCCP was formulated by Government to spell out Ghana’s integrated response to climate change and its development is in accordance with Article 4 of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (hereafter “the Convention”) (NCCP, 2014). Article 4 of the ‘’Convention” stipulates that Parties must develop national policies to mitigate against climate change by addressing emissions form human activities. The Cabinet of Ghana officially agreed to the NCCP in 2013 and it was officially launched in 2014. The NCCP aims at ensuring “a climate-resilient and climate compatible economy while achieving sustainable development through equitable low carbon economic growth for Ghana” (NCCP, 2014). The NCCP identified ten policy focus areas for achieving the policy vision. The policy focus areas are:
Figure 2: The ten policy focus areas of the NCCP Adopted and modified from (Source: NCCP, 2014).
The Government of Ghana has also produced its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement in 2015. The contribution includes 31 climate change measures involving 20 mitigation and 11 adaptation actions with a ten-year implementation timeframe. The NDCs was prepared in response to the Paris Agreement which asked countries that are willing to do so to outline their national commitments and to periodically provide a progress report and state the support required to achieve them (Crumpler & Stefano, 2017). These policies have been developed with inspiration from the “international regimes” (Adu-Boateng, 2015).
The term international regime was originally used to describe formal agreements between states, but the concept has since evolved (Hopkins and Meiches, 2012:1). The exact definition of a regime is debated but it is most commonly referred to as a set of “principles, norms, rules and decision- making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations” (Krasner, 1982: 186). A regime creates a standard of behaviour expected from individual states and cultivates a general sense of obligation for these states. Krasner (1982)
characterized international regimes as certain or express standards, guidelines and basic leadership strategies around which on-screen characters’ desires merge in a given region of global relations. The adoption of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change is to combat the effects of climate change across the globe and national policies from the individual states resonate well with the international regime (Krasner, 1982:186).
