Awaiting heaven’s soothing weep, a climate crisis

It’s Monday, the last day of February 2016; a leap month in which Ghanaians have waited in vain for the first downpour in the year.

Since birth, seven month-old Kwaku cries to the piercing ears and frustrating heart of his parents.

Little Kwaku is neither hungry nor thirsty. He is also not sick. Staying indoors, even with all windows opened, is torture as the family wonders why the winds have stayed still from morning till night.

Kwaku momentarily stays calm and stops crying whilst feeling the warmth of mum’s hand fan or when placed in the home-made bucket pool of water.

But filling up the bucket is also turning luxurious because water bodies are drying up. Some communities have already been hit by acute water scarcity.

The gravest concern, perhaps, is the looming food crisis to hit Kwaku’s family if the drought situation persists.

Farmers in Ghana are eagerly awaiting the downpour to bless their lands in order to grow their crops. But the rains have failed.

Edward Naabanj, a farmer in the offinso north district of Ashanti region says vegetables, maize, cassava, yam and other tuber crops planted earlier in the year are drying up, due to the uncompromising drought.

He and his colleagues are running out of food stock whilst prices of commodities shoot up with no signs of the rains anytime soon.

Ghanaian farmers, mainly subsistent, are vulnerable and less-resilient to the dry spells because they are over 90 percent dependent on the rains to till their lands for food production.

According to David Alfred Mensah, a Management Information Systems Officer at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the country could be hit by a drop in food supply due to the failure of rain in both the major and minor planting seasons last year.  

The entire population depends on productivity on the farms to feed. But variability in the rainfall pattern is affecting crop and livestock production as well as fisheries.

Other plantations and species also have to contend with the incessant widespread bushfires which sweep through farms uncontrollably.

“Agriculture is really suffering,” observed Kingsley Offei-Nkansah of the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU). “You have a drought disaster not because of dry spells but because we failed to put in place the measures that enable us to live normal lives when we have dry spells”.

The weather is indeed hotter than usual and the heat wave is becoming unbearable.

Ghanaians cannot wait for the heavens to open up to mitigate the long dry spell.

“The northern sector of the country will be dry and slightly hazy with few clouds during the forecast period. The day will be sunny and warm,” said a 24-hour forecast by the Ghana Meteorological Agency for February 29. “The middle and coastal sectors will be cloudy over the entire period with sunny intervals during the day. Isolated cases of thunderstorms and rain showers will occur this evening and tomorrow afternoon especially over the forest and mountainous areas of the middle sector as well as the coast”.

Alas, on the first day of March 2016, some parts of the country had the soothing relief of momentary “showers of blessing”.

Yet sooner in the days and months ahead, the joy of the rains will ease and in its wake the pain of torrential rains.

The excessive downpour will lead to sea rise and overflow of other water bodies, causing the havoc of flooding; displacing communities, washing away top soils for crop production and destroying other infrastructure like roads.

A lot of changes are happening in the weather pattern as a result of climate change. Both natural and human factors have been identified as being responsible for the harsh changes in weather conditions.

Interestingly, the first universal agreement to combat climate change was adopted in 2015, a year recorded as the hottest in the history of mankind.

The Paris climate change pact spells out global and local mechanisms required for climate change mitigation and adaptation, including financing climate activities and technology transfer.

The signing of the agreement by world leaders should bring hope to the vulnerable farmer, but these local communities would want interventions to be in the immediate.

Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is already worried at the prevailing uncertainties and variability in the weather.

The country has documented flood and land degradation as the most climate-impacted. But drought is also emerging as a major concern.

The sustainable land and water management programme, already being implemented in the northern part of Ghana, is helping to address the drought situation within the zone.

“We have to be able to work hard so that within the transition zone of Ghana, we can also implement such a programme where a lot of tree growing exercises are undertaken, bush fire control, soil conservation, water conservation to make sure that our resources are sustainably used,” stated Kyekyeku Oppong-Boadi, head of the Climate Unit at the EPA.

Strategies to address climate change concerns in the country are contained in the nationally determined contribution submitted to the UNFCCC ahead of the climate change talks in Paris in December 2015.

According to a World Bank report released ahead of COP21, there could be more than 100 million additional people in poverty by 2030, without rapid, inclusive and climate-smart development, together with emissions-reductions efforts that protect the poor.

The report finds that poor people are already at high risk from climate-related shocks, including crop failures from reduced rainfall, spikes in food prices after extreme weather events, and increased incidence of diseases after heat waves and floods.

Already, increased heat stress and drought-related deaths in both humans and livestock are occurring in the extreme north of Ghana, according to the World Bank. Further risks are related to the higher incidence of malaria and parasitic infections that are linked to flooding.

As weather patterns increasingly become erratic, scientists suggest adoption of drought and flood resistant crops and diversification of income sources as protection for smallholder farmers from effects of climate change.

The task ahead is to domesticate the Paris Climate Agreement for efficient implementation at local level.

Ghana should therefore be seen to be taking action to reduce the negative effects of drought, flood, high temperature and other extreme weather events.

“The negative effects of extreme weather events impact on agriculture, roads, rivers, even the management of our health centres and the wellbeing of people and communities are visible,” said Kingsley Offei-Nkansah.

Better management of water resources, increase in areas under irrigation, security in land tenure as well as innovative farming system and investments in agriculture are among critical areas to combat climate impacts, he noted.

Hopefully, Little Kwaku should be able to feed and slept in comfort when the climate uncertainties, variability and impacts are arrested in local actions to tackle the global threat of climate change.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh