The Importance Of Climate Change In Ghana

Background

Ghana like many African countries are most vulnerable to the changes in climatic conditions and variabilities because of the impact it is having on the socio-economic lives of the people and environment. The impacts that encompasses climate variability and change on the environment has been on an increase in recent times. In anticipation of this natural phenomenon, Ghana joined the global community to find adaptive and mitigation measures by being part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which provides that all parties must formulate and implement national or regional programmes containing measures to facilitate adequate adaptation to climate change (Art. 4.1. b). It has list specific changing and

The high forest zone in the southern Ghana, the savannah region which can be found at the northern parts of Ghana and the transitional zone which is found between the forest zones and savannah. Over 70% of the population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture (fisheries, crop and animal farming etc.) and forest sector for both timber and non-timber forest products (Ghana National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy NCCAS, Chapter 1.1). With this respect, climate variability and change has been a major concern for Ghana. In an attempt to tackle the various challenges and concerns of climate change and variabilities such as droughts, flooding, low precipitation, changes in tropical diseases, etc. the Government of Ghana has established organizational bodies to address the issues of climate change and variabilities. Forestry Commission under the Ministry of Lands and Natural resources as Forest Managers are responsible for the regulation of forest and wildlife resources, the conservation, and management of the resources and coordination of policies related to them to protect the environment for a sustainable

the human influence on the earth’s climate is becoming more and more obvious. Climate observations prove the existence of a global warming trend: global average temperature has increased by 0.88C since 1900 (Hansen et al., 2006). Global warming for the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities, predominately the burning of fossil fuels. People who depend on natural resources, especially the poorest, are often particularly vulnerable to climate variability and change (Morton 2007). The current talks on climate change which was held in Bonn, Germany, are stressing on the need to cut down global of greenhouse gases emissions and thus avoiding the threat of dangerous climate