By Florence Afriyie Mensah
Kumasi, Jan. 25, GNA – The government has been urged to reconsider policy targets relative to climate change, especially in climate migration issues for the country to meaningfully contribute to the global reduction efforts.
Dr Seth Christopher Yaw Appiah, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Social Work, at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), who made this call, said, “from the policy level, we are looking forward to where Ghana will be able to implement the migration policy fully, the implementation is currently hanging up there.”
He explained that Ghana had a Migration Policy, Labour Policy adding that, inherent in these policies appeared to be a limitation such that it doesn’t really focus on how climate induced migration.
“There was supposed to have been the establishment of a migration commission which, I know some works have been done, but till date we do not have the migration commission.
If this commission had been in existence, they would have strictly had the mandate to relook at all migration related issues,” he stated at a climate change symposium in Kumasi.
The Climate Migration, Displacement, and the Social Determinants Health Symposium, which was organized at the KNUST, brought together students and researchers to convey the discussion of climate migration beyond the physical science domain to social sciences.
This is because it is human behavior that is at the centre of climate change and interrogating the issues using anthropological, socio-medical, historical lenses is empirical.
Dr Appiah cited the Bagre Dam Spillage as one that had increasingly displaced people over the years.
He attested that if Ghana had instituted climate mitigation and adaptability responses, the people who had been affected by the Dam spillage and had to move, or those trapped, would have benefitted some social protection interventions.
Dr Appiah pointed out that there were obviously a lot of health effects from the spillages, and it had become cyclical and yearly.
He said climatic conditions were leading to situations of excess flooding and heat waves, such that some people are trapped in conditions and are not able to migrate.
GNA