The looming danger-fuel stations take over wetlands

A GNA Feature by Anthony Bells Kafui Kanyi

Ho, March 22, GNA -It stinks yet many can't smell it. It


is glaring yet many seemed not to notice it. Environmental experts are mute on it; disaster managers


have turned blind eyes to it while people of influence and


cash rapidly destroy the environment to serve their business


interests. It has everything to do with the destruction of wetlands


and water bodies for development projects. The fastest growing business in Ghana currently is the


establishment of fuel filling stations. This is perhaps due to the discovery of oil in


commercial quantities in some parts of the country,


prompting a rush to develop fuel filling stations even on


wetlands. The failure of authorities to protect the environment and


to ensure public safety seemed to have encouraged the


illegality as the practice is gradually expanding and taking

root. The practice is for desperate businessmen to talk


landowners into releasing those lands to them. In the southern part of the Volta Region - Aflao and


Denu precisely - landowners have sold large plots of


wetlands to dealers in the fuel station business. These


businessmen filled the wetlands with gravel and other


materials and turned the swampy beautiful evergreen


wetlands into concrete. The invasion of these natural water bodies by fuel


business hawks is dealing a killer blow to their flora and


fauna, which are vital to human existence and the health of


other ecosystems. It is also denying streams and rivers in those areas


organic material such as leaves that make up the waterway's


greatest resource of nutrients. In fact beyond carbon storage, wetlands provide a

range of environmental services including water filtration


and storage, erosion control, a buffer against flooding,


nutrient recycling, biodiversity maintenance, aesthetic and


recreational enjoyment, provide habitat and critical refuge


for countless species such as nursery for fisheries. It is for these and other reasons that authorities must


act now. Togbe Akliku Ahorney II, the Volta Regional Director of


the Environmental Protection Agency, said 93Wetlands can


be developed when there is a pressing need" but expressed


worry over the concentration of such structures in the


Denu/Aflao area. But the question is who determines what a pressing need


is and are filling stations pressing needs? It is time to refrain from destroying the balance in nature


which only opens the flood gates to disasters. Let us not forget that building in waterways and wetlands

constitutes one of the major causes of flooding in many


parts of Ghana. Speaking at an international wetlands conference in Brazil


in 2008 UN Under Secretary-General Konrad Osterwalder,


said 93People have unwittingly considered wetlands to be


problems in need of a solution, yet wetlands are essential to


the planet's health 97 and with hindsight, the problems in


reality have turned out to be the draining of wetlands and


other 'solutions' we humans devised." Many water resources are no more and the few in


existence have been reduced to gutters. It is clear that some years to come; children would not


know how pleasurable it is to bath in streams and dams, or


what rivers, seasons, flowers and forests are. Sometimes I wonder where I would get my drinking


water from should the tap be closed for two weeks. The last time the tap was closed for three days at a

residential area in Ho, the Volta Regional capital, it was hell


for the inhabitants. Public officials and policy makers in the municipality


who have turned blind eyes to the destruction of the


ecology had to compete with the rest of the people for


water from a forgotten stream for domestic use for the


period that the taps were dry. It is time environmental NGOs and concerned individuals


rise up to protect the environment. We must not forget the saying that 91When the last tree


dies, the last man dies".