Loving Planet Earth, Your Role

This article seeks to understand the current role political leaders, policies makers, and environmental scientist play on environmental management for sustainable development. The article will evaluate the concept that political leaders and political elites are concern about the environment, through empirical studies the political elite gather to make policies that will help reduce the rate of environmental changes but they do not have the political will to effectively implement these policies. In 2006 toxic waste was shipped by vessel Probo Koala from Dutch oil firm Trafigura that causes death of many lives in Abidjan, In Ghana 1000 of electronic waste ranging from fridges, damage computers that contains leak toxic substances such as lead and mercury that destroy the lives are shipped to Ghana and end up in the dumping site call Agbogbloshie.

Yet government official knows about it, the individuals called boggers(Ghanaians abroad) who export these goods from developed countries to Ghana knows about it and the ports authorities know about the dangers but our love for money overcome our love for life. Climatic change has become an issue among world leaders, individuals and the environmentalist, the worst affected are developing nations. The dangerous waste from developed countries finds their way to developing countries, especially in Africa. Africa environment has over the century faced climate change as a result of environmental pollution that has significantly caused by individuals and industries, the increased emission of carbon dioxide, methane, waste management and other greenhouse gasses.

Historically humans have acted on the bio-physical environment in order to satisfy and meet basic biological needs, the activities of clearing the forest for agriculture, mining for minerals, polluting fresh water, production of toxic gasses and overharvesting of fish stock has altered the environmental changes that we are facing now. Environmental changes has have negative impact on human societies especially in Africa, according to environmentalist global climatic change currently poses the greatest threat to human health, therefore, the need to enhance our knowledge of environmental changes and revised measures to responds to such changes and reduce human venerability to the risk and effect associated with the environmental changes around the local, regional and the globe.

Scientists and government officials around the world, from Africa, Europe, Asia, America, Australia and the Caribbean all agree that we are in crisis. Unless we stop destroying our vital life-support systems, or we will all fall. We must maintain them, or pay the penalty. If an industry has polluted the air for many years and is operating on a close budget can we, in good conscience, make demands that will drive it into collapse? On the other hand, can we afford to risk our health by continuing to breathe the polluted air that the industries emit? Worldwide, about 400 million metric tons of hazardous wastes are generated each year. In 1989 the Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was adopted at a meeting convened by the United Nations Environmental Program and attended by 116 countries. Yet the political elite do not have political commitment to implement these policies. Guinea-Bissau was one of the countries at the centre of an international uproar over revelations that several West African states had signed contracts to allow the dumping of toxic waste from industrialized countries in 1988. The government claimed on April 16 that it had agreed only to study a proposal to accept for long-term storage, recycling, or incineration 15 million metric tons of industrial waste over a five-year period. A European environmental group, however, alleged that a contract to actually accept the waste had been signed in February. The agreement reportedly would have brought Guinea-Bissau $600 million in payments. Information Minister Christian-Gilbert Bembet and Scientific Research and Environmental Minister Christophe Mbouramou were dismissed in a July cabinet reshuffle after the Central Committee of the ruling Congolese Labour Party demanded that officials aiding the importation of foreign hazardous wastes be disciplined. The two ministers reportedly had begun negotiating an $84 million contract to store 1 million tons of toxic wastes from Europe.

The article will, therefore, help to crystallize the idea of cooperation, between ordinary citizens, government officials and politicians to enable them to interact with one another to understand the danger of their activities that effect the environment, sustainable environment require the cooperation of political elite and local individuals around the globe, when the grassroots environmental movement are involved in the decision-making process they can effectively manage the concept of sustainable environmental management, by protecting and nurturing our love to support growth over the long-time. The primary knowledge is, therefore, essential for identifying, debating and implementation of environmental policies in the political environment. The issue of whether scientist or politicians have the environmental issues at heart is a debating vex. Scientist developed DDT and government banned the use of DDT, that positive action by the government. The growing concern by political leaders on environmental problems is to embrace but the approaches to the solution are still liberal by the political elites, this because sometimes the actors that bring this toxic waste comes with a juicy offer to these politicians just to corrupt them and have their ways. Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change conclude that human activity is an important cause of the change, Government and political leaders make environment laws to protect the environment but the competition among nation to gain power and economic wealth eliminate government commitment to effective enforce laws. Industrial countries can control outflow of garbage and pollutants in a way that is economically but this is impossible for developing country to follow suit, uncovering that political leaders do not have interest in other countries environmental changes, forgetting that the end result is global, therefore world leaders should embrace all effort to effectively find the indicators to environmental changes.

Our love for the environment is the love for our survive and we should all, therefore, cooperate with all agency with our individual effort to maintain sustainable development, That is to say the world is one unit of a society and developed and developing countries should take much concern of any action that will affect the environment in developing countries or developed countries, recently it was reported that China released carbon dioxide at a higher rate as compare to what the president declared to the international world.

Research shows that with little effort of each Ghanaian we can defend and protected the environment and our lives, I will, therefore, like to share some of the solutions to environmental degradation.

Start a campaign about environmental pollution to create the awareness on social media

Every 10 Ghanaians has at least a relative or friend in abroad let them know that that the second-hand electronics goods the bring to Ghana to sell all dangerous to our environment

Be a responsible sanitation citizen, not an observer by making sure people disposes toxic waste properly

If you have a relative who is working at the harbor educate them on the effect of the electronic waste that they monitor from the harbor into the society

Contact your member of parliament and advocate for a policy that will stop the importation of dangerous toxic and e-waste into Ghana.

Write an article just a sentence to create the awareness in any medium about toxic waste in Ghana

“Be a citizen not spectator”
Author: Ajene Abongo Mashood Jacob