Whale Deaths and Oil Exploration in Ghana

The surge in the death of marine mammals, particularly whales, should serve as a wake-up call because it signals the gradual breakdown of sustainability of the marine ecosystem and if not unraveled would result in a negative outcome for biodiversity, livelihoods and food security.

The situation at hand far exceeds the predictions of the environmental impact assessment of the Jubilee field. The impact assessment predicted minor residual impacts on marine mammals and proposed some measures to counter the effect. According to residence whale deaths were averagely encountered once in every five years but with the advent of oil exploration eleven (11) whales were reported within three years (2007-2010) to have died and washed ashore in the Western Region alone and recently four more have been discovered ashore within a week.

Around the world, energy companies are exploring for oil and gas using seismic airguns in sensitive, wildlife filled waters. The issue about seismic air guns in oil exploration is that the sound waves which extend for hundreds of miles bounce off the ocean floor indicate likely areas for oil. It is the most severe acoustic insult to the marine environment short of naval warfare. This sonic barrage can interfere with a whale’s ability to feed, breed, navigate, communicate and avoid predators — in short, to survive. If a whale goes deaf, it can’t survive. And repeated blasts (100,000 times stronger than a jet engine) can impair hearing easily. The blasts can drive whales to abandon their habitats, go silent and cease foraging over vast areas. It can cause permanent hearing loss, injury and death for whales.

The death of these marine mammals coincides with the commencement of oil extraction and has followed trends with oil exploration around the world. Like their counterparts in many countries that have experienced this negative phenomenon the government agencies responsible for curtailing this ongoing disaster has claimed there are no empirical basis to establish a link between the death of the whales and oil production.

According to Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) there is no question that sonar injures and kills whales. Evidence of the danger caused by these systems surfaced dramatically in 2000, when whales of four different species stranded themselves on beaches in the Bahamas. Although the Navy initially denied responsibility, the US government's investigation established that mid-frequency sonar caused the stranding. After the incident, the area's population of whales nearly disappeared, leading researchers to conclude that they either abandoned their habitat or died at sea. Similar cases have occurred in the Canary Islands, Greece, Madeira, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii and other sites around the globe.

If my argument makes sense, then we have clearly made our choice. We cannot hide behind the curtain of ignorance and claim we know not the cause of the impending extinction of this vital species in our ecosystem. 

Written by:
Enoch Ofosu
Water Resources Specialist
blessedenoch@yahoo.co.uk

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CLIMATE-DRIVEN MIGRATION IN GHANA

Climate change impacts continue to draw thousands of households below the poverty line, especially areas where rain-fed agriculture is the mainstay of households because their livelihood is heavily affected by reduced and erratic rainfall.

The three regions in the north of Ghana (Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions) have persistently been among the poorest in the country. While other regions such as the Central Region and parts of other regions are also poor, the north comprises the poorest large geographical area. Generally, most parts of Ghana have two rainy seasons; major season from April to July and minor season from September to November . But in the north of Ghana, there is only one rainy season which begins somewhere in late April and lasts until about late August or sometimes September. Annual rainfall in the north is about 1000 mm on the average. As in many African countries, poverty is concentrated among farmers and the major livelihood of the people in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions are farmers, rain-fed farmers.

Last year, when I had the opportunity to be part of a team that undertook a study in four districts in Ghana’s northern savannah zone, I came close once again to the reality of how climate change is impacting livelihoods. There, I encountered young men who narrated how they are so pushed to their limits in trying to stay in their communities and work; mainly farming. They revealed to me what used to be a previous cycle of young men moving southwards to find work during the long dry seasons in the north, by which time the rainy season would have started in the south, and returning to make their own farms when the rainy season in the north begins. But now, they say, this cycle has changed. Young men now make a one-off trip to find work and stay in the south. This is the result of reduced and erratic rainfall and prolonged dry periods in the northern savannah which makes the annual return trip to their own farms less profitable compared with staying down south to work and remit families back home.

Households with a son or two living and working in the south in places like Kumasi (the second biggest city) and Accra (Ghana’s capital) have a better coping capacity to the impacts of climate change because they receive remittances from relations in Accra or Kumasi. This has then become a great force attracting young men and women to also migrate. Parents who are old and fragile are advising their children, and even sometimes push them, to migrate to the city to find work and remit them. Such is the gravity of the situation that young men who are not yet migrating and struggling to still make a living from their farms are helpless and feel the pressure everyday to migrate. They cannot stay and see their families starve and wallow in poverty.

I am aware of many interventions aimed at addressing the north-south migration in Ghana. But I am convinced and would like to draw our attention to the fact that any of such programmes to address north-south migration in Ghana that does not include adaptation to extreme climate variability is likely to be unsustainable.

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Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) and the climate change adaptation process

The impact of changing climate in Ghana is so evident even to the ordinary man on the street. One does not have to be a farmer who depends on solely rainfall to plant his crops to notice that there has been a major change in our rainfall pattern. The excessive heat in recent years is felt by all and how many of us have not paused once to wonder how warm our world is becoming? Some of us living in the urban areas like Accra and Kumasi may not be depending directly on streams and rivers for our water needs like the people in Adubinsu and Mmoframfaadwen do, so we may not be seeing at first hand the drying of streams and rivers. However, since our water invariably comes from dams built on rivers whose sources are drying up, we are equally vulnerable.

Whether we stop producing greenhouse gases (very impossible) or not, we are already committed to some level of climate change and there is the need to adapt to these changes since we have nowhere else but this earth to stay. How then can Ghana adapt to the impacts of climate change? Effective adaptation to impacts of climate change requires a careful assessment of impacts of and vulnerability to climate change and subsequently working out adaptation needs of the people. A critical requirement of such an exercise is good quality information. This is where the usefulness of institutions such as the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) cannot be over-emphasised. GMet is mandated to collect climatic information for further development into useable products for the country. Where the capacity for collecting such relevant information and assessing climate change is not adequate, our ability to plan adaptation measures and adapt effectively becomes highly constrained.

A cursory look around the few GMet stations scattered around the country will give even a day-old baby an idea of how resourced the agency is in leading the country’s adaptation efforts. Ghana cannot go on like this. We cannot plan adaptation strategies in a vacuum! We cannot just guess what is likely to happen by how we feel or what some people elsewhere say. We need to know the current situation to project what is likely to happen in the future judging from the current situation, before any meaningful climate change adaptation strategies can be planned. This entails improved observations; improved regional, national and global data, as well as denser networks; recovery of historical data; building of support among user communities that have a demand for climate information; and promoting greater collaboration between providers and users of climate information.

My contact with the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) has always left me thinking about how serious Ghana is when it comes to issues of climate change; something that threatens food production and water resources, life and death. GMet needs major attention. This agency is critical to the security of our country! Some serious attention should be paid at providing the Agency with the needed equipment for effective climate observation. There should be more observation stations in many parts of the country to ensure effective monitoring. GMet staff needs regular and constant upgrading to help them catch up with the fast evolving field of climate science. The many self-motivated, hardworking and enthusiastic young men and women at the agency has should be helped to help this country.

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Biodiversity: We can only manage what we have

I have done some random searches and realised, unfortunately, that Ghana does not have a proper, up-to-date checklist of important biodiversity in the country! I won’t be very surprised if such is the situation in many countries. Well, this may be a reflection of the importance we place on biodiversity. As a result, when they are disappearing, we don’t seem to notice and even when we have noticed, we look on helpless.

The truth is people can only manage what they know they have. The lack of proper data on a country’s biodiversity hinders the country’s ability to estimate more accurately what species are being lost because there is no baseline to compare with. And the economic impact of such losses also becomes difficult to estimate because we have not placed any value on our biodiversity. Increasingly in the current dispensation, when the impact of something cannot be estimated in monetary terms, many are quick to overlook it.

Managing our environment sustainably should not be a burden on us. There is the need to re-orient ourselves: we should realise that a lot of revenue can be generated by proper management of our biodiversity. We should not be quick to always clear the forest, fill our valleys and block waterways as a must for development. A good natural environment should not be treated as an obstacle to development. The environment should not be seen as a tax on our development, a mortgage on our future or a constraint on employment. If we are to have a better way of knowing how much biodiversity we have and also to monitor the environmental, economic and social impact of biodiversity loss, then there is a great need for investments into data collection to ascertain what biodiversity is available to the country and how to manage them for the perpetual flow of benefits to all sectors of the country.

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IF ENVIRONMENT ISN'T IMPORTANT, WHAT IS?

On December 15, 1972, by resolution 2994, the United Nations General Assembly instituted World Environment Day (WED) which falls on June 5 every year. The day was established to deepen public awareness of the need to preserve and enhance the environment. Actually, June was chosen because it was the opening day of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm, 1972), which led to the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Since then, June 5 has been observed every year as World Environment Day and Ghana has been part of the celebrations worldwide.

This year 2010, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) chose as the theme “Many Species, One Planet, One Future” for the global celebrations of World Environment Day. This theme brings into attention the importance of biological diversity (biodiversity) in our lives as a people. Biodiversity is a term simply used to describe the existence of a wide variety of plant and animal species in a particular area or during a specific period of time. It is with great excitement that I tried to add my voice to the need to protect our biodiversity in my country, Ghana, because I believed it is a just course. Somehow, no media house published or gave any attention to any of the features I wrote on environment or biodiversity.

Meanwhile, sometimes I write on something away from the environment and it get’s published the following day! That’s how we place premium on over-pollicisation and polarisation of our country over the very things that means much to our survival. I have quietly tracked some of the pieces I wrote on the environment and they never got published! So I try to put in something entertaining and BINGO... two days later a media house published it. We better sit up and make important things important. If we don’t realise what is for our common good, we can’t get anything right.

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