NADMO, UNDP work to address floods and droughts

The National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with a five million dollar funding from the Norwegian Government, are implementing a three-year pilot project on addressing problems relating to floods and droughts in the country.

Dr Kingsford Asamoah, Project Manager of the Community Resilience through Early Warning (CREW) organisation who disclosed this, said the project sought to select 10 districts, one from each region, to implement the project from 2013 to 2015 to reduce the devastating effects of drought and flood in the selected areas.

He was addressing a consultative workshop in Tamale on Monday for various stakeholders and government agencies in disaster management, where some districts in the Region were selected out of which one was expected to benefit from the project.

Similar workshops had already taken place in eight regions nationwide, at the end of which beneficiary districts would be made known, while field implementation would begin next year.

Dr Asamoah said NADMO would be the implementing partner, with UNDP overseeing quality assurance issues to ensure compliance to guidelines of the CREW project.

He explained that the project would make good use of indigenous knowledge, as well as scientific expertise to create awareness through capacity building to reduce risk disasters, flood and drought prone areas.

According to him, the selected areas would be introduced to modern technology to pick early warning signals, while dredging and planting trees along rivers and water banks would be considered to achieve the project’s objectives.

Dr Asamoah indicated that the project would be proactive and mainstreamed into NADMO’s programmes, stressing that "there are indications that mean rainfall is reducing in the country while sea levels are also rising, culminating in climate change which is affecting the entire country adversely."

The Vo-Naa M. B. Bawah, Member of the Council of State, who chaired the function, underscored the need for the country to implement such a laudable project, which he observed was going to contribute significantly to efforts being made to reduce climate change effects on the ecology.

He said the idea of the usage of scientific and local knowledge in the project's implementation was laudable, adding that “it will help reduce floods and droughts”.