More dams will minimize climate change effect - Dons

The One Village, One Dam Policy is a sure way of helping to achieve sustainable Agriculture, and a critical adaptation measure to climate change, two university lecturers have noted.

The policy, they say, is also a critical climate change mitigation and adaptation measures, which would help store underground and flood water for farming purposes, especially in the northern parts of the country, which experience long dry seasons.

Professor Joseph Aggrey-Fynn, Vice Dean of the School of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Coast, (UCC) speaking at a training programme for media personnel on “The Science of Climate Change” in Cape Coast, said more dams needed to be built, especially in the North, which served as major food baskets.

Yams and several cereals are mainly cultivated in the North.

Prof Aggrey-Fynn, who is also the Director of the Oil and Gas Department, University of the UCC, said the North had large arable land for mechanized farming so it was important to repair their existing dams to aid farmers in growing their crops to boost food production.

“If the Government builds more of such dams in these areas it will be very appropriate,” he noted.

The Centre for Coastal Management (CCM) of the UCC in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is hosting the training programme.

The objective of the workshop is to build capacity relevant to the media to enable them to better mainstream climate change issues into their work.

The training falls under the five-year USAID/UCC Fisheries and Coastal Management Capacity Building Support Project.

Prof Aggrey-Fynn said Climate Change was impacting so much on most Ghanaian coastal communities, where most communities were being swept away because of sea rise and high tidal waves.

Additionally, he said the continual felling of trees indiscriminately, coupled with dwindling fish stocks due to illegal fishing, alongside the cutting down of mangrove trees were making it impossible for fishes to breed within their natural habitat in the mangrove before they would swim back into the rivers and seas.

For his part, Dr Emmanuel Acheampong, a Lecturer at the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, UCC, said due to the impact of climate change the duration of the rainfall had been limited, with short but heavy rains occurring, which continued to flood most places in the country.

He said such rains should not be left to go waste and disturb peoples’ original habitation but rather be stored in the dams and reservoirs for future use, emphasizing that, “This is where the reservoirs and dams come in”.

He noted that such reservoirs were not only important in the Northern regions but in the South.

“Because of changes in the rainfall patterns, we should have the reservoirs to keep the excess water that falls from rainfall,” Dr. Acheampong stated.

“If we could afford, the dams should be done now because we are already experiencing the effect of climate change and that has changed our rainfall patterns so we should put in place the measures to address the situation now as part of adaptation measures.”