Dr Juliet Ohemeng Ntiamoah, an Environmental Engineer, has urged government and development partners to centre environmental stewardship at the heart of the country’s development agenda to achieve sustainable growth.
‘We want to develop, sure, but we don’t just want to develop without thinking of sustainable ways of developing. We need to centre environmental sanitation in everything that we think of doing.
‘It has business opportunities, it also has a lot of implications that helps us to understand our problems at the roots so that we can develop solutions for the root causes,’ she said.
Dr Ntiamoah said this at the 2024 Together Developing Ghana Conference, held in Accra, over the weekend.
The Conference, organised by the Arise Ghana Youth Foundation, a non-profit organisation, aimed at rallying Ghanaians, particularly the youth, to unite towards achieving national development.
It also sought to forge partnerships, share knowledge, and develop strategies that would propel the country towards developme
nt.
It was held on the theme: ‘Uniting to Build Ghana.’
Dr Ntiamoah said the country needed to do more to protect its environment and improve sanitation, noting that they formed critical aspect of every economy, providing the country with natural resources required to attain development.
She bemoaned the current state of the country’s environment, indicating that the situation was causing the nation to lose billions of dollars and threatening food security.
For instance, she said, in recent times, the country lost about $54 billion dollars due to land degradation, largely caused by illegal mining.
She called for more investment into the sector to fix the problem, noting that the situation if not tackled immediately would be detrimental to the country in years to come.
On health, Dr Ntiamoah also noted that improving the sanitation and environment would reduce pressure on the country’s health facilities by reducing drastically the number of days a patient would be required to stay there for recuperation.
‘So, when we are thinking of development, when we are thinking of uniting, coming together to build Ghana, do not think of improving health infrastructure as just expanding hospitals and building a lot of hospitals and giving access to people, but also understanding that whilst you increase certain number of hospitals, you also need to invest in environment and sanitation so that instead of building two hospitals you can probably build one, improve sanitation and people will not need to stay in hospitals for long,’ she stressed.
Mrs Benedicta Owusu Ansah, Vice President, Arise Ghana Youth Foundation, stressed the need for Ghana to invest more in its agriculture to achieve food reliance.
She explained that the country’s continuous reliance on import for majority of its staple food did not augur well for the development of the economy, as that made it susceptible to external shocks.
For instance, she started that recent data, showed that Ghana imported about 50 per cent of rice and 30 per cent of maize it co
nsumes.
‘In 2022, according to the International Trade Commission, Ghana imported 2.6 billion in agriculture and related import,’ she added, saying; ‘This reliance in imported foods not only trades our economy but also it makes us vulnerable to global market fluctuations and price hikes.’
Mrs Ansah called for bold government policies in the sector to reverse the trade, saying; ‘Ghana needs meticulous hands and meticulous attention.’
Arise Ghana Youth Foundation is a nonprofit organization established in June 2018, to provide services to eradicate poverty in Ghana and West Africa.
The Foundation aims to provide a thorough foundation for future success to as many individuals as possible, driven by progressive ideas, bold actions, and support of working with the global community to create solutions to eradicate poverty in Ghana.
Mr Emmanuel Akuamoah Mensah, President of the Foundation, called on philanthropists, organisations and individuals to support the NGO in its quest to eradicate poverty in the countr
y.
Other speakers at the conference are Mr Nathaniel Opoku-Amo, an IT Product Manager, Mr Charles Boateng, an Author and Chief Executive Officer of Lionsmatrix.
Source: Ghana News Agency