Harmonize climate change initiatives to achieve results

By Ibrahim Yussif, GNA
Ejisu (Ash), April 27, GNA - The Director of Crop Services of the Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Mr. Emmanuel Asante Krobea, is urging harmonization of climate change initiatives to achieve the desired outcomes.

He said the situation where different initiatives, plans and programmes were repeated under different projects was unhelpful to efforts at tackling the effects of climate change.

He was speaking at the opening session of a three-day national climate-smart agriculture (CSA) coordination workshop at Ejisu near Kumasi.

The goal was to discuss on-going interventions in the agriculture sector to facilitate the establishment of national, regional and decentralized inter-sectoral platforms for coordinating and promotion of CSA.

Organized by the Crop Services Directorate of MoFA with support from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the workshop was attended by regional directors of agriculture, development partners and other key actors.

Mr. Krobea, said the effects of climate change were multi-faceted and required effective coordination of actions in various sectors.

He underlined the need for stakeholders to focus more effort on dealing with the phenomenon, especially in the agriculture sector.

He said it was important to sensitize farmers - deepen their understanding and to keep them abreast of climate change issues to ensure food security.

That, his noted, was critical amid the worsening climatic conditions - erratic rainfall pattern, which was adversely affecting farming.

Mr. Abebe Haile-Gabriel, Country Director of FAO, in a speech read for him, said the Organization was supporting government to promote an enabling environment to scale-up climate-smart agriculture to develop agricultural food systems that were more climate-smart.

He said the aim was to jointly address food security and climate challenges for sustainable development (economic, social and environmental).

Agriculture and the forestry sectors had been targeted as areas needing more attention if significant improvement was to be achieved, he added.

GNA