The writer
By Prof. Jeffery Haynes
More than 60 countries worldwide, including Ghana, will hold elections in 2024. Ghana’s presidential and parliamentary elections are on 7 December. Both main parties, the New Patriotic Party and the National Democratic Congress, recently published their manifestos. Both parties’ manifestos included sections on the natural environment, including addressing climate change and proposed measures more generally to protect Ghana’s environment. The second part of this article will look at those policies in more detail.
For many countries, the natural environment is not yet a top political priority. This is odd, given that the effects of climate change, deforestation, desertification and other environmental crises, are already key political problems. In Ghana, galamsey, derived from the phrase ‘gather them and sell’, local parlance referring to illegal small-scale, gold mining, is having devastating environmental effects. To date, the government has not managed to deal with this scourge.
Political solutions
Environmental problems require political solutions. They can’t be solved without pro-active government policies. Environmental concerns are political problems because they directly affect the living standards and physical and mental wellbeing of millions of Ghanaians. Not to deal with these problems is a failing of government and future generations will ask: Why was nothing done when there was the time and opportunity to resolve these problems?
The Daily Graphic reported on 2 September 2024 that President Akufo-Addo is ‘lead[ing] the charge for climate-vulnerable countries’. The report stated that the president is making ‘a strong case to developed and worst-polluter countries to support climate-vulnerable Pacific Island countries, whose vulnerability has been disproportionate to their contribution to global pollution’. The president’s concern is rather disingenuous. Ghana is one of Africa’s leading oil producers, a commodity which it sells for dollars on the world market. With over 660 million barrels of proven oil reserves, Ghana is the eighth biggest oil producer in Africa.
Many climate-vulnerable Pacific Islands face submersion below the waves in the near future. The reason is greatly increased carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere, caused by burning fossil fuels. The president is presiding over a country – Ghana – which in its own (small) way is contributing to the very problem that will cause the imminent disappearance of many ‘climate-vulnerable Pacific Islands’.
A second item in the Graphic on the same day, 2 September, reports that severe drought grips Ghana, affecting over 928,000 farmers and threatening the country’s food security. While the Ghana Meteorological Agency had predicted intermittent dry spells during this year’s cropping season, we have a near-drought, with continuous dry spells disrupting crop production. Upper West, Bono East and Northern, growing maize, rice, groundnut, soybean, sorghum, millet and yam, are the worst-affected regions. The article does not mention climate change as one of the main sources of the drought, and no long-term solutions are identified.
Natural resources
Of course, I hear you say, Ghana has the right to benefit from its natural resources to aid the country’s development. Agreed. But does this right extend to contributing to a global problem – human-made climate change – of such great magnitude that eminent scientists fear extinction of the human race if the issue is not promptly resolved?
Apart from harmful environmental effects, Ghana is also facing a problem of serious youth unemployment. Youth unemployment creates misery, insecurity and instability, fuelling Ghana’s brain drain, and leaving the country lacking the brains it needs to progress. What do the two issues have to do with each other, that is, humanity-threatening climate change and youth unemployment? Exploiting Ghana’s oil and gas reserves creates very few jobs for Ghanaians but a whole load of misery for those living on ‘climate-vulnerable Pacific Islands’ as well as nearly a million farmers in Ghana’s north experiencing first-hand the impact of drought.
Let’s suppose for a moment that Ghana is brave enough to say: okay, the effects of exploiting our oil are too damaging to continue. We’ll stop now. What might replace oil revenues and aid youth unemployment?
Solar energy
Ghana is of course blessed with abundant sunshine. Ghana has few solar panels and there is still strong reliance on fossil fuels to produce electricity. The current electricity generation mix is 69% fossil (mainly oil and gas) and 31% of renewables (29.88% hydro) and a mere 1.12% solar.
Domestic solar manufacturing could turbocharge Africa’s energy transition. Solar factories are beginning to spring up across Africa, including in South Africa, helping to create favourable conditions for growth and wider acceptance of the technology. A recent report from the United Nations-backed international organisation, Sustainable Energy for All, finds that solar module manufacturing in some African countries is already cost competitive with equivalent manufacturing in China. The authors assess costs across seven key metrics: availability of raw materials; human resources capability; infrastructure readiness; capital intensity per industrial unit; enabling policies and regulations; demand dynamics; and production competitiveness. It costs US 16.3 cents for one watt of photovoltaic module assembly in China, and only marginally more in African countries, such as Tanzania (US¢17.9 cents), South Africa (US¢18 cents), Namibia (US¢18.1 cents) and Ghana (US¢18.3 cents).
So, here’s the thing: massively invest in home-produced solar panels and you deal with two pressing problems: climate change inducing gases, such as carbon dioxide are greatly reduced, youth unemployment is addressed, and many people’s quality of life is improved, not least by making electricity cheap and freely available in parts of the country which do not presently enjoy such benefits. Just a pipe dream or potential reality?
The writer is an Emeritus Professor of Politics, London Metropolitan University, UK.
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