President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will lead Ghana’s delegation of climate negotiators to this year’s 27th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC (COP 27) in Egypt.
COP 27, scheduled for November 7 to 18, would be hosted in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh, and will provide the platform for climate activists and negotiators to discuss, propose actions and make decisions towards facilitating the implementation of the various Articles of the Paris Agreement and the Glasgow Climate Pact.
At a Pre-COP media briefing organised by the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation in Accra, Dr Kwaku Afriyie, sector Minister, said Ghana’s team was ready to present the real needs of the African people at the conference.
“Ghana will participate actively at the negotiations, and the Presidency implementation summit and also host a number of events at the Ghana Pavilion.
“We will launch the Article six framework and sign some additional bilateral agreements with Sweden and Singapore. Other sectors will host events relating to their mandate, i.e., energy, forestry, transport, finance etc,” Dr Afriyie stated.
He said Ghana, which hosts the Presidency of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), would also demand as a moral right, funds from the developed world to address issues of loss and damage being experienced by Africa due to greenhouse emissions from the big polluters.
He argued that Africa, which continues to feel the highest impact of the climate change phenomenon but contributes just less than five percent of such emissions, needed to be helped to mitigate and adapt to such impacts.
He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in February this year, projected the likelihood of some 118 million vulnerable people in Africa being affected by the impact of climate change by the year 2030 if nothing is done to curb climate issues.
“With regard to loss and damage, Ghana recognises the impact of loss and damage on women, youth, children and other vulnerable groups and calls for the integration of these groups.
“Finance for loss and damage is key…We expect delivery of new climate finance under the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate Finance… We will follow up with our CVF colleagues and push to ensure that is achieved.”
Meanwhile, altogether, 322 Ghanaian activists from both state and non-state institutions have registered on the government’s portal to attend and participate in COP27.
Dr Afriyie explained that of the total, participants from government institutions account for 226, while those from non-state actors are 72 and those belonging to the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) are 24.
“Half of the number on the government platform are NGOs and partner institutions who decided to go through some institutions to be registered.
Therefore, the actual government staff attending the COP is about 150…People attending this will be participating in diverse programming including negotiations, workshops, side events and bilateral meetings. Sponsorships also form diverse sources.”
