Ghana will require at least $23 billion to embark on climate change adaptation and mitigation to build resilience to the global environmental threat.
The measures required have already been captured in its Nationally Intended Determined Contributions (INDCs) and submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The country is one of the 53 African nations that met the deadline to submit the INDCs to the UNFCCC Secretariat by October, this year.
All countries were required to submit their own nationally determined contributions towards reducing carbon emissions after the climate change conference in Lima, Peru, last year.
Addressing a High Level meeting of UNFCCC representatives, ministers and heads of delegation in Paris, the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations (MESTI), Mr Mahama Ayariga, described Ghana’s INDCs as ambitious but one which would require enormous investment in the next decade to materialise.
“In the next 10 years, we need US$22.6 billion in investments from domestic, international, public and private sources to finance these actions.
“We have unconditionally committed to lower Green House Gas (GHG) emissions by 15 per cent compared to the business as usual emissions by 2030”, he said.
According to him, the investments would be directed at increasing the country’s clean energy sources, placing premium on natural gas and solar, as well as creating a low carbon economy and infrastructure.
The minister said climate change was no longer a distant subject matter for scientists but a daily reality for citizens.
“That is why we cannot go home without a binding enforceable multilateral agreement that allays their fears and gives them hope and a sense of security that they will not lose their homes, livelihoods and even lives to floods, internal and international migration, and conflicts; and that we shall halt the encroachment of the Sahara desert and restore their degraded lands and forests”, he said.
He impressed on the gathering to have ambitions as big as the enormity of the threats of climate change to global prosperity, peace and security and to humanity’s very survival.
“Global ambition boils down to individual national ambitions and that is why the quantum of commitments partners make here, to fund adaptation actions and mitigation measures, are critical and must be founded on sincerity and historical justice with transparent disbursement mechanisms,” Mr Ayariga added.
