Friday, May 25, 2012

Ghana’s farm sector likely to be worst hit by climate change

Spyghana.com: Ghana may be worst hit by the impact of Climate Change (CC) if adequate measures are not adopted to contain the brunt, according to  a report by the Environmental Protection Agency. The report cautioned that the current low yields than projected being experienced in the agric sector had been attributed to the effects of climate change.

It warned that yields in the agric sector are expected to further decrease, which may likely affect the vulnerable and the poor. The report termed the Policy Advice Series 2 highlights the negative effects of climate change on the agricultural sector in Ghana.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in  Article 1, defines climate change as: ‘A change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods’.

Historical data for Ghana from the year 1961 to 2000 clearly shows a progressive rise in temperature and decrease in annual rainfall. In Ghana, climate change is manifested through rising temperatures, declining rainfall totals and increased variability, rising sea levels and high incidence of weather extremes and disasters such as flash floods (Minia et al. 2004)....

A pineapple field in Ghana, shot by hiyori13, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

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