KNUST HOSTS INT'L. CONFERENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

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The first ever international conference on Geography and Development to be hosted in Ghana has been held at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST in Kumasi with focus on ‘Climate Change and Sustainable Development’. 

The Conference,  attended by mainly academics from Africa and coordinated by the Department of Geography and Rural Development of the KNUST, was a platform for the participants to assess the efforts, gains and challenges of the climate change phenomenon on selected countries relative to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs. The event comes on the heels of the Conferences of Parties, COP 22 in Marrakesh and COP 22 in Bonn, Germany. 

During the three-day forum, there were presentations on ‘Evidence of climate change from statistical analysis of temperature and rainfall data of Kaduna State in Nigeria’, ‘Plant wealth and their sustainable utilization under changing climatic conditions; The case of Thal desert, Pakistan’, ‘Assessing the vulnerability of livelihood to climate change in the Offinso Municipality of Ghana’ among other critical topics. 

Speaking at the official opening of the Conference, a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and immediate past Vice Chancellor of the Valley View University, Professor Dr. Dr. Daniel Buor, mentioned climate change as a single global phenomenon that seriously threatens the existence of humanity, particularly Africans who according to him, are incidentally bearing the brunt of a problem they did not make any significant contribution to.

 The Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, in an address read for him, mentioned human activities ranging from biomass energy extraction, farming, shelter provision, industrial expansion and urbanization as some contributory factors of climate change, saying that the alarming intensity of these socio-economic challenges are undermining the national efforts at meeting the Sustainable Development Goals. 

Sharing practical experiences in The Gambia and the United Kingdom, the Lead Speaker at the Conference, Professor Momodou Sallah, entreated African universities and research institutions to make their work more relevant to the local settings.


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