By Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Bongo (U/E), Oct 18, GNA – Environmental Chiefs in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region have been equipped with knowledge and skills to protect water bodies and campaign against environmental destruction in their various communities.
The two-day capacity building exercise which brought together 25 environmental chiefs and 10 lead farmers, was organised by the White Volta Basin Secretariat of the Water Resources Commission (WRC) with funding support from the Dutch Water Authorities under the Blue Deal project.
The Blue Deal project is an integrated approach to nature-based solutions which seeks to promote access to clean and safe water to cover over 20 million people worldwide, through building the capacities of governmental institutions and other major stakeholders to help protect the environment and enhance service delivery.
In Ghana, the Blue Deal project focused on the Lower Volta Basin and the White Volta Basin and seeks to ensure that livelihoods of dwellers are protected while providing safe water for them.
Currently, the project is implementing various Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) interventions in the Kpasenkpe Sub-Basin and the installation of the environmental chiefs by the Bongo Traditional Council with support from the Commission was to assist in the implementation of the IWRM strategies in the Bongo District.
The environmental chiefs are selected community members, who have been enskinned as chiefs to work with various stakeholders including opinion leaders, farmers, state institutions and civil society organisation among others to protect the environment and promote sustainable agriculture practices that protect the land, environment and water bodies in their various communities.
Speaking at the training in Bongo, Mr Aaron Bundi, the Blue Deal Project Manager of the White Volta Basin, indicated that the Blue Deal project aimed to ensure access to safe water for drinking and agriculture activities through various interventions.
He explained that the community involvement was key to ensuring good environmental practices, adding that there were already traditional systems in many communities that protected the environment that needed to be tapped and enhanced to make greater impact.
The Project Manager indicated that the environment and its resources were under threat from various activities such as mining, agriculture, population growth among others and underscored the collective efforts to addressing the challenge.
He said the training was part of strategies to empower and strengthen the environmental chiefs with the knowledge of the various aspects of the environment as well as the national laws governing the environment.
“Our intention is to get a team that will link up with the traditional authorities and duty bearers to protect the environment”, he added.
Mr Jesse Kazapoe, the Head of the White Volta River Basin of the WRC, said the destruction of the environment through inappropriate farming, felling of trees and bush burning among others contributed to destroying the water bodies and increasing the impact of climate change.
He said protecting the environment required a collective responsibility from all stakeholders and urged the environmental chiefs and lead farmers to work to educate their subjects and relate with stakeholders to ensure sustainable practices in their various communities.
Resources persons from the WRC, Department of Agriculture, Mineral Commission, Forestry Commission, Environmental Protection Agency and Ghana National Fire Service took the participants through how unsustainable practices destroyed environment and the role they could play to address such challenges.
They were encouraged to desist from felling trees, burning of debris for agriculture purpose, use of inorganic fertilizer, illegal mining among others to ensure that the environment was not destroyed and food security of the people not threatened.
GNA