By Muyid Deen Suleman
Kumasi, June 27, GNA – Students have been implored to take keen interest in climate change issues as key stakeholders in combating the global threat.
As people in transition to take leadership roles soon, they should join global efforts towards addressing issues exacerbating climate change at the individual, community, national and international levels.
Dr Frank Baffour –Atta, a Lecturer at the Department of Environmental Science at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) who made the call, said the involvement of students in the fight against climate change could go a long way to tackle the fundamental drivers of climate change.
He was delivering a presentation at a sensitisation forum on climate change put together by Student’s Movement for Climate Resilient Environment (SMovCaRE) with funding from the Global Green Grants Fund.
The forum which was held on the theme, “It’s Time to Teach Everyone to Beat Climate Change”, sought to sensitise the students on the dangers of climate change and encourage them to join efforts to combat it.
About 250 people, including KNUST students and participants from outside the university attended the forum.
Dr. Barffour-Atta emphasised the need to use water as a primary defence against climate change as a people, saying that it was a resilient solution to the menace.
He said, “We can only manage these impacts by ensuring our communities and ecosystems find integrity, define new choices and economic pathways, and show our children and grandchildren that we are all moving toward resilience, prosperity and development.”
According to him, the greenhouse effect is essential to life on earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space and cautioned against inimical human activities.
He mentioned carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapour as five key greenhouse gases mostly contributing to climate change.
Professor Leonard Amekudzi, Provost, College of Science -KNUST, said climate-related shocks and risks exacerbated inequalities among children in terms of health, education, and long-term development outcomes hence it was necessary to sensitise everyone.
The Provost said, the ancient or paleoclimate evidence revealed that current warming was occurring 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age with carbon dioxide emanating from human activities.
“An estimated 130 million additional people will be pushed into poverty because of climate change by 2030 and this is very threatening to livelihoods since people will be in competition for scarce resources,” he quoted a World Bank report.
Mr Bismark Nkrumah, an economic student and the Climate Change Project Lead encouraged all the students to join the crusade on climate change sensitisation.
GNA.