By Samuel Dodoo
Accra, Oct. 8, GNA – Stakeholders at a forum on the Carbon Mitigation Project have expressed the necessity for the installation of institutional stoves in senior high schools, teacher and nursing training colleges to reduce the use of firewood.
Caterers of the school feeding programme must also use the stoves, which would generally mitigate the environmental and climate change-related challenges, reduce green-house gas emission, and enhance the health of the populace.
The project, an initiative of CookClean Ghana, in collaboration with Climate Gains AG, is to install efficient and improved institutional stoves in schools and colleges, for free.
It is under the Ghana-Switzerland Bilateral Agreement and being carried through the Ghana Green Schools Project.
The stakeholders comprised the Conference of Heads of Assisted Senior Secondary Schools (CHASS), school matrons, School Feeding Secretariat, and civil society organisations.
They discussed the environmental challenges posed by desertification and climate change, low soil fertility, increased erosion, and high biomass consumption, which had negatively impacted the environment.
Also on the table was the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that address environmental and health challenges to increase long-term benefits for local families.
Mr Nicholas Manu, the Chief Executive Officer, Cookclean Ghana, told the Ghana News Agency that most schools in Ghana cooked with inefficient traditional stoves that consumed a lot of fuel.
The high biomass consumption had negatively impacted on the environment leading to deforestation, land degradation, green-house emissions, and loss of soil fertility, hence the need to embrace the new cooking technology.
“Adoption of the project would lead to a significant decline in green-house gases emission associated with the use of solid fuel for cooking,” he said.
Mr Mohammed Aminu Lukumanu, a participant, said the installation of the stoves would increase access to clean cooking in schools to protect the health of both the users, the pupils and students.
He called on the partners to promote the planting of trees in all the beneficiary schools to mitigate climate change while tracking and documenting the lessons learnt for future reference.
GNA