Tertiary Intuitions called upon to introduce climate change courses

Tertiary Institutions have been called upon to introduce courses in Climate Change as a way to help curb problems associated with it.

The Team Leader of the Ghana Ecological Network, Dr Delali B Dovie made the call during a Public Lecture organized on the theme “Building Capacity for Ecology in Ghana for students and lecturers of the University for Development Studies at the Nyankpala Campus in the Northern Region.

Dr Dovie was unhappy that as pivotal institutions for

national development none of the Tertiary Institutions in the

country have developed a course on climate changes as

discipline and said that in this 21st century Ghana still relied on

foreign Scientists to educate it on its own environment.
He stressed that unless that trend changed the country’s

policy on the environment, natural resources and agro-

biodiversity would look beautiful but very difficult to tackle.
“The change must begin now with our Tertiary Education

Institutions to dispel the notion that Ecological Science is a dry

discipline with little or no place in society”, he said.
Dr Dovie pointed out that any nation’s development that

was not built on the principles of ecological resilience may not

be sustainable and that the fewer people were trained in the

discipline of ecology the more they may be learning towards

unsustainable development.
He said in order to contribute towards addressing climate

change problem, the Ghana Ecological Network with

sponsorship package from British Ecological Society was

implementing a project dubbed “ Building Capacity for

Ecology in Ghana. ”
The package includes public lectures in Tertiary Institutions

aimed at bringing cutting edge ecological research information

to those who need them especially in the tertiary institutions.
The Public Lecture was marked by various topics on

climate change including “Impact of climate variability on the

agro-ecology of northern Ghana.
There was also the discussion of Connecting Climate

Change and the Renewal of Natural Resources delivered by Dr

Francis Obeng and Mr Clement A Weobong both lecturers of

the University for Development.
They stressed the need for the students of the University to

champion the crusade against environmental degradation at

their various community levels.
They also appealed to communities to be adaptive to

climatic change and to avoid degrading the environment.
This they said occurred when they mined indiscriminately,

felled trees for charcoal, and bush burning which they noted

were very common in the three northern regions.