To Support Climate Resilience, Ghana Needs to Find Ways to Finance It
Participants in the climate finance workshop pose for a group photo.
On June 14 and 15, 2023, the Feed the Future (FtF) Ghana Policy LINK Activity organized a workshop to increase the knowledge of FtF Ghana implementing partners (IPs), USAID staff, and civil society organizations on climate finance and Ghana’s climate finance landscape. The workshop comes amid increasing calls for climate resilience interventions to help Ghana’s most vulnerable populations cope with rising sea levels, droughts, increasing temperatures, and erratic rainfall.
A World Bank country report suggests that annual floods impact an average of 45,000 Ghanaians along the country’s southern coast. At the same time, increasing temperatures are leading to longer periods of drought and causing bush fires that devastate agricultural areas, especially in the country’s north.
The workshop was held in Tamale, capital of Ghana’s Northern Region, and was attended by 29 participants. The workshop included presentations and discussions on the types of climate finance, how the Government of Ghana’s policies affect their availability, and the carbon market framework. The workshop sought to support FtF Ghana IPs to effectively coordinate their climate finance interventions while identifying investment opportunities and practical interventions that can increase access to climate finance by local agribusinesses and other stakeholders.
Ghana’s government recognizes climate change as a developmental issue and has established policy interventions in its medium-term national development framework to combat climate change. As a signatory to the Paris Agreement, Ghana is implementing its climate change actions through Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). One way to achieve Ghana’s targets under the NDCs is through green financing, which can provide funding for the large-scale investments required to significantly reduce emissions and adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change.
FILE PHOTO: To deepen citizens’ knowledge of the human causes of climate change, Policy LINK’s Ghana activity organized a December 10, 2022 climate change-focused durbar—a large gathering of people—where the residents of Gbullung, Dalun, and nearby communities reflected on how their socio-cultural and agriculture practices contribute to long-term shifts in rainfall and temperature patterns (photo: Policy LINK).
In welcoming the participants to the workshop, Mr. Yunus Abdulai, Country Lead for the Ghana Policy LINK Activity, explained that “results from a climate change assessment Policy LINK commissioned revealed that stakeholders had limited knowledge and were largely unaware of climate finance. This informed the Activity’s decision to demonstrate leadership towards addressing the knowledge gap through the workshop.”
Currently, Ghana’s agricultural producers have few avenues to secure funding for climate resilience activities. In fact, an October 2022 Policy LINK study showed that banks reserve just 3.5 percent of their total portfolios for borrowers in the agriculture and fisheries sectors.
The workshop’s facilitators, drawn from the University of Ghana Business School, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Ministry of Finance, utilized a participatory, knowledge- and experience-sharing approach to meet the event’s objectives. In small groups, the participants discussed challenges, opportunities, and probable areas of collaboration and deepened the conversations on the workshop’s thematic areas.
Dr. Gerald Forkuor, Climate Change Lead for Policy LINK, thanked USAID Ghana for supporting the training and the participants for their interest and attendance. He mentioned that a climate finance working group, initially composed of Policy LINK, the Feed the Future Ghana Mobilizing Finance in Agriculture (MFA) Activity, and the Feed the Future Ghana Market Systems and Resilience (MSR) Activity, will be formalized, and will bring on board other IPs and their collaborators. The working group will support improved coordination of FtF IPs’ climate finance interventions and strengthen synergies between them.
Improved access to climate finance has been shown to enhance developing countries’ ability to implement low-carbon and climate-resilient development strategies while promoting innovation and technology transfer in climate-friendly industries—all without forcing spending cuts in other development sectors.
Currently, Ghana’s agricultural producers have few avenues to secure funding for climate resilience activities. In fact, an October 2022 Policy LINK study showed that banks reserve just 3.5 percent of their total portfolios for borrowers in the agriculture and fisheries sectors.
Resources
It Employs a Third of the Country’s Population, but Ghana’s Ag Sector Remains Largely Unbanked
In Ghana, Changing Behaviors through Increased Climate Change Reporting
Read more about Policy LINK’s climate-related work in Ghana.