MMDAs losing out on assessing DDF

Many Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) are losing out on assessing the District Development Funding (DDF) from development partners due to their failure to satisfy guidelines on climate change adaptation.

The DDF is a pool of funds from the donor community with a component contribution from the Government of Ghana to support existing development agenda of the 170 MMDAs.

The fund has its own assessment of performance of the various MMDAs applying and that includes guidelines on climate change adaptation and mitigation to assess how a particular district was preparing to manage the climate change effects.

Ms Patience Agyare Kwabia, a Development Consultant, disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) during a training workshop at Akosombo.

She indicated that climate change was a global issue that was gradually being factored into all strategies of development to ensure that globally its effects were managed.

According to her, the guidelines on climate change was to ensure a global approach to the adaptation and mitigation of the effects of climate change, which had resulted in the emission of dangerous gases in the atmosphere and global warming.

She attributed that failure to the low attention given to climate change issues, and stressed the need for the media to learn more about climate change to serve as educators of the public to create the awareness for policy formulation.

The training workshop was organized by the African Adaptation Programme (AAP) jointly with the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) based in Washington.

It was aimed at building the capacity of some selected journalists on climate change reporting to create awareness on its effects.

Dr Delali Dove, a Scientist from the African Adaptation Centre of the University of Ghana Legon, who took the participants through the characteristics of climate change and its effects on humanity, said human activities over a period of time had resulted in climate change.

He said activities such as deforestation, emission of dangerous gasses into the atmosphere through burning and heat related activities, had resulted in excessive heat termed as global warming and having debilitating effects on humans.

Dr Dovie noted that the earth’s natural capacity of absorbing 50 percent of heat had decreased leading to excessive heat, which when left unchecked, would result in drought and other unpleasant situations for many countries in the world, in the near future.

He said hitherto digging of boreholes was 70 feet below the earth surface but because of climate change that had resulted in dryness of the earth, it is now being dug at 130 feet before adequate water was guaranteed and urged the journalists to educate the public.**