By Mahmoud Sillah
Executive Director of ActionAid Sierra Leone Foday Swarray has on Thursday 16th March 2023 urged the government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change to ensure zero emission rates of green-house-gases (GHG) that is polluting the environment and affect the climate change in the country.
He made this appeal during the presentation of the Climate Change Convergence Communique to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Prof Foday Moriba Jaward at his Wilkinson Road Office in Freetown.
ActionAid and their partners are asking government and development partners to put certain measures in place to address the negative effects of climate change and environmental damage.
Mr Swarray continued that the communique reflects the perspectives of all the members present at the convergence learning and sharing on climate change impact on communities in Sierra Leone.
He highlighted some of the areas the government should pay keen interest such as cancellation of current debt repayment owned by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to annex the countries of the United Nations Financing Climate Change (UNFCC) so that those monies shall be channelled for climate change resilient, adaptation and mitigation actions.
Also the country should stop the importation of environment-depleting substances such as fertilisers, pesticides, chemicals and support the investment inorganic manure and non-environment-depleting practices in LDCs, especially countries like Sierra Leone and capacity building and research as resource form to increase the use of technologies and innovation for addressing climate change challenges.
In his remarks the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Prof. Foday Moriba Jaward highlighted the bold step the government has taken to establish his ministry and some of the things they have achieved within the shortest possible time.
Noting some of the challenges the country is facing such as changing rainfall patterns, massive deforestation and blocking of our drainages with solid waste among others to address these challenges his ministry together with its supervisory agencies have reviewed the obsolete laws and set up environmental court which the lawyers and judges have been trained to impose punishment on law offenders on the environment.
He furthered that as a responsible government they want to ensure people do the right things in the environment that would be conducive for all.
The Minister pointed out the ongoing project of his ministry that is planting of 5 million trees, which they have already planted 2.8 million trees. According to him, all trees planted were funded by the government. In the area of loss and damage which is one of the action points of ActionAid and its partners he said funding is now available for it as they pushed for it during the last COP27 in Egypt.
