By Emmanuel Gamson
Takoradi, April 24, GNA – Mr Desmond Appiah, the Country Lead for Clean Air Fund, a global philanthropic foundation tackling air pollution, says poor air quality does not only pose health risks to the citizenry, but also has dire consequences on the country’s economic growth.
He said a World Health Organisation (WHO) report in 2018 had shown that about 28,000 people in Ghana died through complications caused by air pollution.
“Again, the World Bank has done a report which has shown that the Ghanaian economy loses about $2.5 billion a year due to poor air quality, so there is the need to commit much attention to this issue,” he stated.
Mr Appiah was speaking at the opening of a three-day consultative workshop, held in Takoradi, to solicit stakeholders’ inputs to fine-tune a project meant to promote enforcement of environmental laws and regulations on managing air quality in Ghana.
Dubbed: “The Clean Air Project”, the initiative seeks to determine the barriers to the full enforcement of environmental laws and regulations on managing air quality on urban roads in the country.
It is being implemented by the University of Ghana (UG) and University of Education, Winneba (UEW), with funding support from the Clean Air Fund.
The workshop, first in series of four to be organised, brought together representatives from state institutions, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), media, law enforcement agencies, academia, and transport operators, among others, to seek their views on how best to reduce air pollution on the roads.
According to Mr Appiah, the country had laws and regulations on managing air quality, but enforcement was lacking.
He said: “The Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies are doing well on the quality of air monitoring, and there are some transportation initiatives that are being promoted, yet we seem to be having a challenge in seeing through everything for us to get the real impact of these regulations.”
He noted that the Project was, therefore, to help the implementing partners to get a systematic understanding of some of the things that hindered the successful enforcement of such environmental laws, particularly those on-air pollution.
Mr Appiah said the workshop was part of activities to seek broader consultations to develop recommendations to help influence policy directions to create an enabling environment to enhance effective enforcement of the regulations by the relevant mandated authorities.
“The part of why we are doing this is to be able to work with authorities to know and tackle the root causes of enforcement challenges, so that we can positively impact the quality of air that we breathe in,” he added.
Mr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, the Western Regional Minister, said the government acknowledged the effects of air pollution, and the urgent need to combat it.
He noted that the government had put in place environmental regulations and was working on catalysing the clean air movement, while advocating solutions to air pollution.
Mr Darko-Mensah said despite the existence of stringent regulations, enforcement could be challenging, and commended the UG and UEW, and partners for coming up with The Clean Air Project to unravel the root cause of such issues.
GNA