A workshop to develop a Climate Change Action Plan for the City of Accra has ended in Accra with a call on stakeholders to appreciate the challenges and opportunities climate change presents and to target emissions reduction measures. This will enable Accra to achieve a low carbon future and to meet the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The three day workshop, designed to provide a platform for stakeholders to share and exchange knowledge on climate change interventions was organized by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and C40 Climate Leadership Group of which Mayor Mohammed Adjei Sowah is one of two Vice Chairs for Africa on the Steering Committee, with support from Ricardo Energy Environment and Sustainable Energy Africa.

The main objectives of the workshop included  developing evidence based climate action targeting decisions on emission reduction, identifying climate action priorities for Accra, explore possible future city-level greenhouse gas emissions through a range of policy and technology deployment scenarios as well as analyze the actions required to achieve different emission reduction targets.

In an address, Mr. Tom Buckland a representative of Ricardo Energy Environment, said the aim of the workshop was to build capacity around scenario planning and how it could inform climate action planning in Accra.

Representatives from various sectors, departments within AMA and civil society organizations worked on providing the basis from which Accra can move forward and refine its climate action planning based on skills, knowledge and tools.

"This is the first of three workshops that we are running in the city and the idea is to help Accra develop a Paris Agreement Compliant Climate Action Plan". He added that the workshop focused on identifying the effects of greenhouse emissions and looked for possible impacts on the city in the future to consider what Accra might look like in 2050 under different scenarios.

A Program Officer of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Mrs.Juliana Bempah said that climate change was posing a lot of challenges to national development, indicating that, Ghana was actually experiencing a lot of climate change.

She stressed on the need for Accra to focus on greening initiatives that could improve on air quality and water conservation.

Mr. Desmond Appiah, the Chief Sustainability and C40 City Advisor to the Mayor of Accra stressed the need for all sectors and departments to collaborate in the efforts at addressing the challenge of climate change.  He called for improvements in data quality to inform emissions reporting, scenario modelling and identification of transformative mitigation and adaptation actions to tackle and prepare the city to address climate change.

He also addressed the need to integrate local level actions with actions implemented at the national level through a robust and agreeable framework for vertical integration to deal with climate change.

Dr Felix Addo Yobo of the National Development Planning Commission shared the elaborate framework on climate change and guidelines which is a part of the development planning process for MMDA's