A 22 climate change working groups has been constituted in four districts of the Northern Region by Northern Sector Action on Awareness Centre (NORSAAC) with support from IBIS-Ghana.
The working groups drawn from Savelugu/Nanton Municipality, Kumbungu, Sagnarigu and Central Gonja districts will engage officials at district assemblies and agencies in their respective areas on climate change issues and how it affect their livelihoods.
NORSAAC partnered with IBIS in 2013 to implement a project titled; Democratic and Accountable Governance Program with the aim of ensuring that Civil Society Organizations and the media track the application of climate change funds and also advocate effective implementation of climate change adaptation strategy and plan for enhanced environmental rights and sustainable livelihoods.
The group took measures to sensitized their communities on how to put in place local measures such as by-laws on cutting of trees, formation of fire volunteers against bush burning, initiation of forest grove and alternative wood fire for domestic uses all geared at dealing with climate change
Officials from Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Savannah Agriculture Research Institute have been brought in to provide technical support for the groups on how to deal with climate change effects.
The stakeholders and the working group on regular bases engaged to deliberate on ways that climate change programs can benefit communities especially, the marginalized.
At a day’s Climate Change forum on effects on local livelihoods in Gbulung in the Kumbungu district, participants said government and NGOs have a lot of task in fighting climate change because most rural women have no alternative way of cooking and any attempt to stop them cutting down trees without alternatives sources will fail.
Some have also called on government and climate change campaigners to provide rural people with Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cylinders. The Gender and Governance Officer of NORSAAC, Abukari Kawusada said there is increasing challenges and that health and livelihoods needs intervention to reverse the trend.
According to her, the changing climate has so negative impact on the vulnerable and NORSAAC as a learning organization partnered with IBIS-Ghana to help addressed the increasing poverty in rural areas of the organization’s operational area.
Through their support, Gbulung area youth with support from traditional rulers and are collaborating with the forestry division of the assembly to plant trees after they had set up by-laws among themselves not to cut down trees. Climate change she said is not exclusively to an area or a continent but a global problem now and everyone need to show keen interest and commitment in combating it.
Programs Facilitator of IBIS-Ghana, Safia Musah said community members need to know how government especially the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies are spending donor support on climate change.
IBIS she said, was also working with Abantu for Development, an Accra based NGO that is spearheading policy issues on climate change at the top level so that holistically its impacts on poor farmers and the locals are reduced to barest minimum.
The program officer of EPA, Jafaru Musah, said issues of environment are multi-sectorial adding one department cannot fight it alone.
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