The British High Commission has announced that it will be contributing ?229m to the Ministry of Environment and Science to help towards the Ghana Government's national assessment of 10 years of implementation of Agenda 21.
This will feed into the global review of the implementation of Agenda 21 which the United Nations will undertake at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), to be held in Johannesburg in September 2002. The UN will also draw up a work programme on sustainable development for the future.
The funding will be used to conduct a series of regional workshops to allow members of the public, NGOs, other experts and officials to feed their views into various position papers. These will be used to help formulate the Government of Ghana's position at the WSSD.
Commenting on the provision of funding Dr Rod Pullen, British High Commissioner, said: "We hope this funding will help Ghana complete its ongoing preparations for next year's World Summit on Sustainable Development. It is a demonstration of our commitment to the success of that meeting; a commitment which is demonstrated by the fact that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was the first world leader to announce that he would attend the Summit."
Expressing the Government's gratitude for the donation from the British High Commission, Prof Dominic K Fobih, the Minister of Environment and Science said:
"Donors such as the UK Government have a partnership role to play by supporting the development of many of the building blocks of sustainable development strategies. This donation will further enhance the work of the National Preparatory Committee, whose responsibility it is to put in place a national programme of activities to assess the implementation of Agenda 21 in Ghana so far, in readiness for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) scheduled for Johannesburg in September 2002.
The Government of Ghana wishes to assure you that, mechanisms will be evolved for cross-sectoral co-ordination and planning of the assessment process in Ghana through multi-stakeholder information-gathering, consensus-building and eventually our active participation in regional, sub-regional and global discussions on the Rio process. Ghana will be actively involved in negotiating Africa's position at the various prepcoms lined up to prepare all nations for the WSSD.
Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action, to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organisations of the United Nations System, Governments and major groups in every area in which the human race impacts on the environment. It was adopted by more than 178 Governments at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.
