The Private Enterprise Federation (PEF) has organised a workshop on Mapping of Environmental And Climate Change Projects to create more awareness on the impact of climate change and identifying ways of mitigating the ever changing ?situation.
It was intended to build on PEF’s Climate Change programme which seeks to strengthen the capacity of critical actors in Ghana?s climate change governance architecture to influence climate change policies and programmes.
The workshop which was sponsored by the Konard Adenauer Stiftung, was to educate participants on the approach for addressing climate risks in project planning and incorporating climate change considerations into existing modalities for project design, approval and implementation.
Delivering a Presentation at the workshop, the Chief Executive Officer of the Private Enterprise Federation (PEF) Nana Osei-Bonsu noted that Climate change poses a serious challenge to development globally and increases complexity in planning and development at the project level. While projects have traditionally been assessed for their potential impact on the environment, the reality of a changing climate requires both policy makers and project proponents to consider the impacts of climate-related changes on the performance and sustainability of the project itself.
According to Nana Osei-Bonsu, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is particularly relevant as an important environmental decision-making tool, which can play a key role in ensuring that future developments are themselves resilient and that their environmental impacts do not exacerbate climate change?s effects on human or natural systems.
He indicated that, while governments and multilateral development institutions have increasingly recognized the need to integrate considerations of climate change into EIA, actual implementation remains at an early stage globally, except in a few countries, adding that while few countries have taken concrete steps to introduce formal legal requirements to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change adaptation in EIA processes, inadequate data, unclear operational guidelines, and lack of practical experience continue to pose great challenge to practitioners in mainstreaming climate change.
According to Nana Osei-Bonsu, in as much as climate change is becoming a global phenomenon, the absence of coherent and implementable policies as well as lack of enforcement of regulations could stifle the progress being made to mitigate its effects.
However, he averred that interventions like adaptation, mitigation and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) must be implemented to safeguard the situation.
He explained that REDD is a climate change mitigation strategy employed by conservation organizations, project developers and governments in developing countries for forest conservation strategies and carbon impact scenarios.
Nana Osei-Bonsu also pointed out that there was the need for government to ensure free-flow of fund into financing green climate projects since that will provide critical resources for the private sector towards climate change adaptations.
The Minister for Environment, Science and Technology and Innovation, Hon. Akwasi Oppong Fosu, who was represented by Mr Fredua Agyemang, not in his speech that the ministry had developed a National Climate Change Policy which provided a national agenda and direction on how to tackle climate change issues and developments.
He said, the policy, which covered three main areas, namely Adaptation, which involved coping with disasters of climate change; Mitigation, which involved reducing global warming; and Social Development, which involved promoting social development, and which took five years to develop, expresses the holistic approach government is taking to save situations as far as climate change is concern.
Various speakers who represent other stakeholder groups, including DANIDA, ISSER, EPA, UNDP and KAS indicated in their presentations that although it is difficult to track the degree of climate change adaptation rates, private sector investments in adaptation are critical to scale up climate finance efforts to the levels required by projected needs.
They however pointed out that, private actors are not fully aware about climate-related risks and opportunities, even if climate change can directly affect their assets and revenues and that knowledge, technical, financial, and risk barriers can hinder their engagement.
The public sector, they also recognized, can play a role in helping to overcome these obstacles.
However, getting private actors on board in activities that reduce countries? vulnerabilities to climate risks in Least Developed Countries is key.
Unfavorable investment climates and underdeveloped private sectors are said to be limiting the opportunities for engagement.
