Let’s protect our planet - Akufo-Addo

There is the need for speedy implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change if the world’s marine environment, which is on the verge of destruction as a result of climate change, is to be saved, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said.

Nana Akufo-Addo, who is attending the meeting of the UN Ocean Conference which opened on Thursday 8 June at the UN Headquarters in New York and wraps up on Friday, 9 June, expressing his opinion on preserving the health of global oceans and seas in a Facebook post, said: “The impact of climate change on the oceans is alarming, and likely to exacerbate the existing impacts of anthropogenic activities in the marine environment.”

He added: “The gradual warming of our oceans and increasing acidification, and their effects on the marine environment and resources, need to be addressed through the speedy implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which many Member States have signed and ratified, including Ghana, and which represents the blueprint for global action to reverse this trend.

“The recent announcement of the withdrawal of the USA from the agreement is a disturbing development, which Ghana believes, like the majority of the global community, requires urgent reconsideration by the new US administration. We have to work together to protect our planet.”

Paris climate agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020.

In the Paris Agreement, each country determines plans and regularly reports its own contribution it should make in order to mitigate global warming.

To reach these goals, appropriate financial flows, a new technology framework, and an enhanced capacity building framework will be put in place, thus supporting action by developing countries and the most vulnerable countries, in line with their own national objectives.

The agreement commits 187 countries to keep rising global temperatures well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and endeavour to limit them, even more, to 1.5C.

The United States of America, led by President Donald Trump, has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement.

He claimed the agreement would cost the US$3tn in lost GDP and 6.5 million jobs – while rival economies like China and India were treated more favourably.