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".
