Halting illegal mining, our concern - Minister

Dr Joe Oteng Adjei, Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations (MESTI) has expressed Government’s readiness to deal decisively with illegal miners in the country.

The decision, he said, had come about due to the increasing number of people involved in the act and the fast rate at which the environment was getting degraded.

He said this during the celebration of this year’s World Environment Day, which was on the theme, “Think, Eat and Save the Environment”, in Accra.

Dr Oteng Adjei appealed to Ghanaians to be bold to report all persons, including Ministers of State, District Chief Executives and chiefs who are involved in such acts to the rightful authorities for the necessary action to be taken.

He said the environment had come under serious attacks from chemicals such as mercury used by illegal miners across the country leading to the pollution of water bodies and farm produce.

Dr Oteng Adjei cited imbalances between ecosystem, health and economic development created by bad agriculture practices and illegal mining activities as some of the main drivers of climate change, which should be of concern to all.

He said according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world’s productivity would increase by 70 percent by 2050 so that it could feed the estimated nine billion projected population by that year (2050).

“However, the world seems far from achieving this goal since estimations from the FAO indicates that while one in every seven people in the world go without food, about 1.3 billion tons of the world’s food is wasted every year,” he said.

Dr Oteng Adjei said Ghana’s struggle to achieve food security and eradicating hunger was very much tied to the levels of poverty in the country adding that whiles about 28 per cent of Ghanaians still lived below the poverty line, statistics available indicate that between 20 per cent to 50 per cent of food produced were lost to post harvest challenges.

He said annually, the country loses about GH?700, 000 to post-harvest management practices which could make achieving food security difficult.

He said the inadequacy of storage facilities, poor road infrastructure and lack of ready markets for most of agricultural produce were some of the major hindrances to maximizing food waste through post harvest losses.

The Minister said the implementation of the agriculture sector policies such as the National Buffer Stock Policy and the construction of feeder roads to link rural communities to cities and towns were some of the ways of insulating farmers against losses.

He said the revamping of the Ghana Oil Palm Development Company and the Pwalugu Tomato Processing factory were some of the measures taken by the government to ensure the preservation of perishable foods.

In a message read on his behalf by Madam Ruby Sandhu-Rojon, UN Resident Coordinator, Mr Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary –General, called for an end to all practices which mitigate against the environment.

He said although food production outstripped demand, yet 870 million people were undernourished with childhood stunting increasing.

He called for access to adequate nutrition for all and greater assistance to small holder farmers, especially in developing countries.

“In developing countries, pests, inadequate storage facilities and inefficient supply chains are major contributors of food loss”, he said.

He noted that in the developed nations, food thrown away by households and the retail and catering industries rots in landfills, releasing significant quantities of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

He urged Governments in developing countries to improve on essential infrastructure, maximise trade opportunities with neighbouring countries and appealed to businesses to revise their criteria for rejecting produce to reduce agricultural waste worldwide.