Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has highlighted some Government policies and interventions being implemented to curb the degradation of the coastal landscape of the country.
Addressing the third Biennial Conference on Fisheries and Coastal Environment, organized by the Centre for Coastal Management – Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience (CCM-ACECoR) of the University of Cape Coast, with support from the World Bank, WACA, USAID, among others, on November 6, 2023, in Accra, Dr. Bawumia spoke on the enormous benefits Ghana gains from the ocean, which includes fishing, tourism and jobs and how threatening the degradation of the country’s coastal landscape is to these gains.
He noted that the degradation “includes coastal erosion caused by sea level rise, pollution from municipal waste such as plastic and chemical pollution from illegal mining and so on”. Adding that, “It also involves over exploitation of fisheries resources through Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, among others”.
Dr. Bawumia underscored Government’s policies and interventions saying, “In recent times, the Government of Ghana has embarked on various activities to ensure sustainable ocean management. The first of the activities was the president joining the high-level panel for a sustainable ocean economy,”.
“The Ocean Panel as it is called is a special global initiative of seventeen (17) world leaders who pledged themselves to a new ocean programme to work at attaining a sustainable ocean economy. To strengthen this effort, a two-day maiden National Blue Economy Summit was held in Accra in May/June, 2023 under the theme “Our Ocean’s Heath, Our Prosperity, Our Planet’s Security”.
“Secondly, the government has approved a loan of 150 million USD from the World Bank on the West Africa Coastal Area (WACA) programme to stem the tide of coastal degradation occurring in our coastal areas.”
“Also, the government has begun various activities to fight illegal unreported and unregulated fishing in our waters. We are seriously regulating the license of foreign fishing vessels especially their fishing gears, where they fish and whether they have licenses or not. In fact, some of these foreign vessels have been denied licenses already. We have also digitized the access to pre-mix fuel for artisanal fishing activities.”
“Just like the Africa Union and taking from the AU submissions, our government believes that the ocean presents a huge opportunity to accelerate development and improve upon the well-being of the people of this country. Ghana, with its extensive coastline, is committed to leading the charge towards a sustainable and inclusive Blue Economy,” Dr Bawumia added.
The third Biennial Conference on Fisheries and Coastal Environment was under the theme: Inclusive Blue Economy in Africa: Towards Sustainable Transformation and Resilience of the Marine Environment.
