Promote Climate Mitigation and Resilience (GHTNS0011)

Commitment ID

GHTNS0011

Commitment Title

Promote Climate Mitigation and Resilience

Problem

Climate change poses significant threats to agriculture, food security, and livelihoods in the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality. The Rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and increased frequency of extreme weather events affect crop yields, soil health, and water availability.
The Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality is vulnerable to climate change due to the high dependency on natural resources and limited capacity to adapt to the effects of its action.
The Municipality has several natural resources from all sources (on land, underneath, and in water bodies). These include minerals such as Gold, Manganese, marble stones, fertile land, water bodies as well as forest reserves.
In years back, there were a richer diversity of life which had greater opportunity for economic development and adaptive responses to new challenges such as climate change in the Municipality.
Unfortunately, in recent times, there exist threats to the sustainable use of these natural resources in the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipality as rapid increases in these activities are gradually depleting the economic value of these resources and affecting its sustainability. For instance, there have emerged numerous illegal miners in the municipality who are harnessing the resources unsustainably as they mine and leave pits open and destroy the vegetation without reclamation. This exposes the future generation to difficulty in providing their basic needs, induces climate change, and leads to abject poverty in the future.

Status quo

The efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change have included projects and initiatives like climate change sensitization and tree planting. Although the government has taken steps to address this menace, the country has consistently lost rainforest at an alarming rate in recent years of which the Tarkwa Nsuaem Municipality is no exception. An illustration is the introduction of Green Ghana Day by the government of Ghana, which saw communities, civil society organizations, non-governmental institutions, traditional leaders, and religious organizations join forces to plant trees annually.

With the support of the government and other development partners, the Tarkwa-Nsuaem Municipal Assembly, over the years, has planted over 50,000 trees throughout the Municipality.

Action

This commitment entails the co-development of climate mitigation and resilience initiatives with all relevant parties including CSOs, the public sector, the private sector, the business community, traditional authorities, and the community as a whole. The commitment will bring together stakeholders to develop workable programs that will cover institutional disaster risk reduction, mitigation and adaptation as well as ensuring a clean and healthy environment. The activities earmarked for implementation under this commitment include the following:

• Conduct a climate risk assessment of the Municipality and organize a multi-stakeholder forum to develop a climate Action Plan for the Municipality.
• Organize quarterly ‘Operation Clean your Frontage’ Program across the Municipality.
• Initiate ‘Trash for Art’ program in schools to reduce indiscriminate disposal of plastic waste within the Municipality.
• Sensitize farmers on smart climate agriculture.
• Promotion of safe and sustainable mining.

Expected Results:

• Improved municipal resilience to and adaptation to climate change.
• Well documented risk and vulnerability analysis on climate change and Management.
• Sustainable management of Plastic waste through the ‘TRASH FOR ART’ project.
• Increased agriculture productivity through climate-smart agriculture practices
• Reduced impact of illegal mining.

Overall objective: Creating a sustainable and climate-resilient municipality.

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem described above?

In order to promote people's welfare and security toward gender-responsive and rights-based sustainable development, the plan will serve as a guide for the Municipality in achieving sustainable development through effective stakeholder participation while building communities' adaptive capacities, boosting the resilience of vulnerable communities, and optimizing disaster mitigation opportunities.

Expected Outputs: 

• Farmers trained in Climate-smart Agriculture practices
• Art pieces created from plastic waste materials.
• Community awareness on climate resilience and adaptation.
• Clean-up exercises organized Task Force formed to combat illegal mining.

Expected Outcomes:

1. Increased innovation in plastic waste management.
2. Increased citizen's knowledge on the impacts of climate change.
3. Increased agriculture productivity
4. Increased community awareness and knowledge about climate change, its mitigation and a clean and healthy environment.
5. Improved sustainable mining.

What long-term goal as identified in your Open Government Strategy does this commitment relate to?

Our long-term objective of "protecting the natural environment and creating a resilient municipality" is related to this commitment. The Municipal Authority has prioritized climate resilience activities to always have the most vulnerable in society at the center, especially the poor, the disabled, women, and children, in order to enhance Municipal climate change resilience and adaptation.

Primary Policy Area

Crisis Response, Inclusion

Primary Sector

Environment & Climate, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

What OGP value is this commitment relevant to?