AMA Boss, Mohammed Adjei Sowah
The Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), Mohammed Adjei Sowah, has called on inhabitants of the capital city to be mindful of the incessant encroachment on green spaces and the indiscriminate cutting of trees to avert the devastating effects of climate change.
He said that the city of Accra was fast becoming a concrete jungle.
“Because we live in the tropics, the sun burns us all the time. But data tells us that the heat is increasing and it is affecting our lives in Accra.
“We used to have a lot of trees and green spaces, yet we have pulled them all down and built high rise structures that are not even energy efficient,” he said.
He was speaking at the opening of the ninth edition of the Ghana Garden Flower event at the Efua Sutherland Children’s Park in Accra, on Wednesday.
The event, which is organised by Stratcomm Africa under the auspices of the Ghana Garden and Flower Movement, seeks to create a culture of environmental awareness by promoting the commercial, aesthetic and health benefits of horticulture and floriculture.
The five day event, which is being held from August 25 to August 29, 2021, would celebrate the successes of previous events over the years under the theme, “9G: Nine years of green living.”
Activities lined up for the event include a conference, Nurture to Bloom – a discussion on women nurturing men, Israeli Green Innovation Competition, children’s workshops, awards night as well as fun activities such as movie night, music night, karaoke night amongst a host of several other activities.
The Acting Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, who opened the event with the cutting of a tape, lamented the poor patronage of local flora at the expense of foreign ones.
“We sadly find out that for many occasions and our events in Ghana, imported flowers are used and sometimes these floras are imported from countries that do not even have a good climate as ours,” she said.
She has, therefore, encouraged Ghanaians to support the horticulture and floriculture ecosystem in order to create employment and grow the economy.
The Chief Executive Officer of Stratcomm Africa, Esther Cobbah, said the event has grown tremendously with the Ghana Gardens and Flower Movement directly focusing on individual responsibilities for ensuring a ‘Greener and Cleaner Ghana’ which was in tandem with Ghana’s green agenda and sanitation efforts.
The Ghana Gardens and Flower Movement, she said, remained committed to global efforts to address climate change, which has been highlighted in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), adding that, “It is in the interest of every Ghanaian to make green living a lifestyle.”
By Issah Mohammed