On a hot afternoon at Jamestown beach, once considered to be one of Accra’s most famous beaches, 25-year-old Francis Cudjoe and his three friends squat in the open air while in conversation.

They are defecating in full view on the beach, and they are not alone. Off in the distance, one can spot many more residents dropping their pants, squatting and freeing their bowels.

Shortly after they leave, ocean waves wash away their waste.

With four million people without access to a toilet and 4.5 million with no sewage facilities, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recently ranked Ghana the fourth most unsanitary country in Africa in a total of 52 judged, and the second dirtiest out of 15 West African countries.

The two organisations monitor African countries’ sanitation services.

This ranking has rallied local environmental organisations to clamour for more radical governmental action on Ghana’s deteriorating sanitation record.

For the local Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS), “the ranking should serve as a reality check for authorities who act as if all is well,” says Executive Secretary Patrick Apoya.

He says Ghana has a “national sanitation crisis” and calls on the government to declare a “national emergency.”

Desperate measures

Walking down the beach, one has to carefully pick one’s steps to avoid stepping in faeces.

“The beach has been where I have come [to do this] since childhood - I can’t stop. In any case even if I want to stop, there is no alternative,” Cudjoe tells IRIN.

With no toilet facilities, people turn to bushes, drains, fields and even outlawed pan latrines to defecate.

The pan latrine is a portable toilet made up of a bucket around which is fitted a wooden frame or seat with a hole in the middle.

When the bucket is full, users pay somebody to dump it in a waste centre. Eventually the waste is pumped out to the sea.

Ghana’s Supreme Court banned the use of these latrines in July 2008, saying they violated people’s dignity, and ordered city authorities to arrest and prosecute users.

The court also ordered the government to build public toilets across the capital and subsidise the construction of toilets in private homes, measures that have yet to be implemented, according to CONIWAS.

Health and economic toll

About one kilometre away from Jamestown beach, women selling food at Makola market in central Accra are surrounded by heaps of refuse. An unbearable stench pervades the air as green fluid seeps from the refuse onto the road.

According to the government’s Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD), Ghana can only manage 30 percent of the daily waste its residents generate.

Such conditions lead to up to eight deaths an hour, estimated Minister of Health Courage Quarfhigah.

Every year, the health ministry reports more than 400,000 out-patient cases of sanitation-related diseases, including diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and hepatitis, which lead to about 65,000 deaths.

Alias Sory, director general of Ghana’s health services, told IRIN costs are mounting. “Increasingly, the country’s health facilities are being overwhelmed by sanitation related diseases. The cost to the nation is unbearable.”

Dirty streets and beaches can repulse tourists, according to acting executive director of the Ghana Tourist Board, Martin Mireku. “Tourists who come here are not used to such things [defecation on beaches], it’s repulsive and has the potential to drive them away, and the time to act is now.”

Tourism provides 25,000 jobs in Ghana, and contributes more than US$1 billion to the annual economy, representing five per cent of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to Mireku.

Criminalising public defecation

But some in the government dispute the figures, saying the problem has been overstated. “We are not saying we don’t have a sanitation problem, but we are certainly better than most of our African colleagues,” said Maxwell Kofi Jumah, the second in command at the Ministry for Local Government, the ministry responsible for monitoring sanitation facilities.

Despite this assessment, the national government is starting to take the issue more seriously, according to CONIWAS’ Apoya. It has drafted what will be the country’s first national sanitation policy, which Apoya anticipates will be approved by late 2008.
 
Alongside legislation, the national sanitation ministry plans to crack down on sanitation offenders. Working with the justice ministry, government officials plan to employ sanitation watchdogs to punish people who defecate in public spaces, who litter, or who do not maintain sanitary conditions at home by fining or arresting them.

Working in all 138 metropolitan, municipal and districts assemblies across the country they will send out a clear message, according to Apoya: if you unload here, you pay a fine.

But this measure cannot solve the problem said Accra-based teacher John Appiah. "This is putting the cart before the horse - we don't even have public litter bins anywhere in the capital. They are just desperate to prove that they are doing something about a really bad situation and it's just covering up for their failure."

IRIN 

Following an upsurge of pre-election violence that has killed three people and injured many others in northern Ghana, experts fear hostilities will continue in the months leading to December presidential and legislative elections.

Charred remains of houses, walls riddled with bullets, and burnt cars and are talismans of last week’s violence in the Northern Region's capital of Tamale. Violence erupted  following a shooting incident on 31 August that abruptly ended a political rally organised by the ruling New Patriotic Party.
 
A 12-hour curfew is currently in force and additional joint military-police patrols have been deployed on the streets.

Fred Degbe, president of the religious non-profit Christian Council, told IRIN, “If Ghana burns because of politics we have nowhere else to go, so it’s in our interest to do everything possible to preserve the peace we are known for in the sub-region.”

Burnt remains

Affected by the violence was Alhaji Mahama Jeboni, an opposition party chairman for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who is based in Tamale.

His 30-year-old daughter, Sayakulu Mahama Jeboni told IRIN, “The attackers asked my father to choose between his life and his properties. There were about a hundred people all armed. They were arguing whether to burn the houses first or my father’s commercial vehicles. They set fire to all of his eight cars.” She said the flames razed their three homes to the ground. “Everything was burnt, all our possessions, possessions dating back to one hundred years. We have nothing left,” Jeboni told IRIN.

Violent flashpoint

There have been other conflicts since the beginning of 2008, mostly based on land rights, but none that turned deadly.

In early August 2008, violence erupted during voter registration as supporters of the two main political parties vandalised registration centres and traded gun shots.

December elections

In December 2008 Ghana’s President John Kufuor is expected to hand over power as he has served the maximum constitutional eight-year term.

The ruling New Patriotic Party seized power from the National Democratic Congress in 2000 during the first peaceful democratic transition of power since Ghana attained independence in 1957.

Now for the first time in 16 years the NPP, a party that won power while in opposition, must hand over the presidency and with polls predicting a close race with a high possibility of a run-off, that president could equally come from the NPP or the NDC.

But for Degbe, who is helping to launch an anti-violence campaign in the north, “the importance of the elections can never be a justification to destroy the country’s peace.”

IRIN

Aid agencies attending an international meeting on the effectiveness of aid say donors have not made enough progress addressing long-time problems in aid.

About 800 participants from donor and aid agencies, recipient countries, financial institutions, and civil society groups are gathering for the first of three days in Accra at a high-level forum to discuss how to improve donor assistance in order to meet fourteen aid effectiveness targets by 2010.

Donor governments and partner countries endorsed these targets in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in 2005, to build stronger partnerships so that governments could achieve their development goals.

Robert Fox, head of the non-governmental organisation Oxfam's delegation, told IRIN, “The effectiveness targets set for 2010 won’t be reached unless there’s a sea-change in commitment from all donor countries to match their rhetoric with action.”

Expected conference topics include timing aid to make it more effective, improving donor coordination, avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy, and how to improve the monitoring of spending and outcomes.

Management improving, but still weak

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) which set up a working group on aid effectiveness, donors are doing more to help governments manage aid, which is leading to a better evaluation of whether spending makes a difference.

But only ten of the 28 countries surveyed by the DAC in 2006 and 2008 have set up stronger systems to manage public funds.

While donors channel more aid directly through partner governments they do so inconsistently.

Where does the aid go?

In the Paris declaration, donors and partner governments agreed to channel more cash directly through government systems in order to strengthen them and enable aid partners to have more ownership of development funds.

The agreement was made with the understanding that some governments, particularly those in fragile states, find it difficult to absorb large cash flows and do not have strong checks and balance systems in place but that unless such systems are built up, aid will not be sustainable.

According to the DAC survey, only US$10 billon out of US$45 billion in annual aid in the countries surveyed, actually makes it to the governments directly, according to Oxfam. “Too many donors still set up their own parallel management structures or channel their aid through private corporations,” said Fox.

From 2004-2007, 40 donors signed almost 700 individual agreements with the Ugandan government, according to the government’s records.

Unpredictable aid makes it hard to plan

More than half of money donors promised over the last three years was never delivered, according to DAC, which is about 20 percent less than what donors set as a goal at the 2005 Paris conference.

Afghanistan has received US$15 of the US$25 billions it was promised, with the United States delivering half of its commitment and the World Bank just over half, according to Oxfam.

“The lack of aid predictability jeaporadises significantly a country’s ability to plan and account for its resources to its citizens,” stated the DAC report.

Recommendations

To improve aid management , Oxfam’s Fox says donors need to fund governments directly. “It is fundamental that aid is delivered to strengthen the capacity of countries…unless we do this we will always confront the same problems.”

And when it comes to predictability, the DAC calls on partner and donor governments to better document what aid they give and receive so both can be held accountable for what is missing.

For Oxfam the answer is to extend aid contracts. “Donors must commit to three to five years and follow through on those commitments as a fundamental building block for reforming the aid system.”

Fox continued, “If we can’t raise the bar in terms of performance to fulfill these modest targets, then we have no chance of reaching the Millennium Development Goals. We hope this meeting steps up the pressure on donors and builds up confidence among them that this is the way to go.”

IRIN

As the latest round of UN climate talks came to a close today, Greenpeace urged governments to pick up the pace of the negotiations which, in just over a year, must deliver a global deal to save the climate. The meeting, in Accra, Ghana, showed some progress but still lacked the urgency required to meet the 2009 target.

Greenpeace welcomed Korea's announcement to set its own emission reduction target, and the constructive role played by Mexico in building bridges between developing and developed countries. Some small incremental steps forward were made in the areas of reducing emissions from tropical deforestation and, although there was some progress on the question of funding for developing countries, there is still a lack of concrete proposals on how clean technology will be transferred and more detail is needed on how developing countries will be assisted to adapt to climate change.

"Too much time is being wasted arguing about procedural details and restating historical positions and not enough real substance is being put on the table,"said Bill Hare, Director of Climate Policy at Greenpeace International. "This is the third round of talks since the two-year process was launched in Bali last year, and by now the deal that will be agreed at the end of 2009 should be taking shape."

Governments will meet again in Poznan, Poland in December, to continue negotiations. Marking the halfway point between the meeting held in Bali in 2007, and the meeting to be held in Copenhagen in 2009, Poznan should therefore provide a clear milestone for paving the way towards the 2009 Agreement.

"Already, expectations of progress at Poznan are being lowered by some governments, who would prefer to leave everything to the last minute with the excuse that 'this is the nature of international negotiations'," Hare observed. "The fact is, we are already in extraordinary times and we require extraordinary measures now. These talks must move forward rapidly to give the world a chance of avoiding climate catastrophe."

Greenpeace

As UN climate talks are coming to a close, WWF applauds an emerging group of visionary countries for showing ways to move the debate towards the right level of focus and detail. While the mandate to agree a new global climate treaty by 2009 remains a gigantic challenge, Accra shows that overcoming the muddle of conflicting views and crafting an effective deal to tackle climate change is possible and depends on the political will to show leadership.

“Currently the glory in the global fight against climate change is reserved for those progressive governments which are getting the debate further down to the essentials”, says Kim Carstensen, Director WWF Global Climate Initiative. “The cumbersome talks in Accra did not stop a first group of determined negotiators from working towards a critical shift in the debate, but a success at the next climate talks in Poznan is far from secured, and we need to see more countries engage seriously in lifting the political ambitions.”

According to the global conservation organisation, governments managed to push their critical discussions closer to conclusions on some key issues: strategies are shaping up to reduce CO2 emissions from the destruction of forests, and talks about financing deep emission cuts and adaptation to climate impacts gain clarity. However, other tracks of the complex negotiations failed to progress in Accra and are falling dangerously behind schedule.

“Smoke grenades thrown by backward parties and an overdose of procedural discussions have paralyzed the climate talks and overwhelmed negotiators for too long”, says Kathrin Gutmann, Policy Coordinator WWF Global Climate Initiative. “In Accra we start seeing the first positive examples of constructive dialogue led by innovative parties, which should become a solid trend in Poznan in December."

Accra also confirmed trends already observed at previous talks: the EU is losing its role as a climate leader to a range of developing countries and creative players like Norway and Switzerland. By improving old proposals or fleshing out new ones, these countries are becoming reliable agents of progress. Together with big emerging economies they form the new engine of the talks, highlighted by South Korea’s pledge in Accra to set emission reduction targets and boost renewable energies.

“The EU disappointed in Accra just like it disappointed at previous talks in Bonn, expressing regret for coming to the negotiation table with empty hands”, says Diane McFadzien, Programme Coordinator WWF Global Climate Initiative. “Poznan should be a home match for the Europeans and a perfect opportunity to live up to their full potential - in order to avoid matching Canada, Russia, Japan, Australia and the US in their lack of ambition.”

WWF

Swathes of West Africa’s coastline extending from the orange dunes in Mauritania to the dense tropical forests in Cameroon will be underwater by the end of the century as a direct consequence of climate change, environmental experts warn.

"The coastline [as it is now] will be completely changed by the end of this century because the sea level is rising along the coast at around two centimetres every year," said Stefan Cramer, Nigeria director of Heinrich Boll Stiftung, a German environmental NGO.

Even where urban areas appear unscathed, sea level rise will still challenge towns and cities by threatening the underground water supplies from which millions of people across the region draw their water.

"[Increasing salinity] will make the ground water undrinkable and unsuitable for agricultural purposes. The result will be food and water insecurity," agreed George Awudi, Ghana Programme Coordinator for the environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth.

The effects of sea-level rise will be most “dramatic” in Nigeria's economic capital Lagos which is just five metres above sea level, with some parts of the city lying below sea-level, Cramer said.

The flooding is likely be most severe in Lagos because of its position at the southern end of the Gulf of Guinea where stronger tropical storms from the South Atlantic create storm surges up to three metres high, Cramer said. He estimates that most of the 15 million inhabitants of Lagos will be displaced and Nigeria’s southern Delta region where oil installations are located will also be swamped.

Other major urban centres in West Africa which experts have identified as at risk of flooding are Banjul in The Gambia, Bissau in Guinea Bissau, and Nouakchott in Mauritania. All three capitals are at or close to sea level.

Blame

Environmentalists blame the gradual melting of the 3,000 metre-thick Greenland ice cap in the A rctic as being responsible for the coastal erosion along the Coast of Guinea. Greenland is three times the size of Nigeria and its emptying into the Atlantic causes a rise in the sea-level.

"It is all due to climate change - the greenhouse gas emissions result in global warming and subsequent melting of the Greenland ice cap," Cramer said.

Compounding the situation in West Africa, in August 2007 a tropical storm 5,000 kilometres off the coast caused a shift in the strong currents that run near the Nigerian coast and destroyed a protective sand bar.

The solution

Environmental experts have different solutions to the problem.

"I think the best way out for the moment is devising simpler and more cost effective solutions such as how to preserve towns and villages under threat and preventing sea water intrusion", the director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Yvo de Boer said.

"The sensible option is moving to higher ground which is a tough option especially for Nigeria as it means giving up its economic centres in Lagos and its oil installations in the Delta", Cramer said.

But Awudi at Friends of the Earth described relocation as an "unthinkable option” due to its economic, social and cultural implications.

"Every solution to a problem must focus on the major cause of that problem and in this case greenhouse gas emissions by industrialised countries which are responsible for sea-level rise must be effectively tackled," Awudi said.

"The industrialised countries should take proactive steps in curtailing their emissions responsible for climate change which will have a positive impact on sea-level rise," he said.

However according to Cramer even if the industrialised countries do stop their greenhouse gas emissions, the trend of rising sea levels would continue unchanged for another 50 to 100 years.

The experts all made their comments on the sidelines of a UNFCCC working meeting in the Ghana capital Accra where representatives of 150 countries have gathered to continue preparatory negotiations for a landmark climate change conference due to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009 where a successor to the Kyoto Treaty is to be signed.

IRIN

Industrialised and developing countries will be under intense pressure to agree on greenhouse gas emission reduction targets during week-long negotiations over future greenhouse gas emission targets which kicked off in the Ghana capital Accra on 21 August.

"There is little time left to get a solid negotiation text on the table. Clearly the clock is ticking," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) told the 1,600 delegation from 150 countries at the opening ceremony.

The Accra meeting is one of a series of working-group sessions between rich and poor countries meant to build consensus ahead of a final meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009. The parties have to seal agreements on emissions reduction, mitigation and adaptation.

The Copenhagen talks will be expected to create a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol, but preparatory talks between rich and poor countries have so far mainly yielded acrimony.

"The clock is ticking, we need to be more pragmatic and move beyond rhetoric to make progress as we move towards Copenhagen," Ghanaian president John Kufuor, who chaired the opening ceremony, told the delegation.

The one-week talks in Accra will include discussion of policies and incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries, and joint discussion on the finance and technology needed to limit emissions and adapt to climate change.

"We can't allow ourselves to be too late. We need to move from the era of words to the era of action," said Connie Hedegaaro, Danish environment minister. "Two years after exhaustive talks in Nairobi, we are back in Accra for more negotiations. We need to move forward", she said.

The day after the Accra conference opened, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) launched a study in conjunction with the non-governmental organisation Care International warning climate change threatens to increase the number of deaths from disasters around the world.

The UN has repeatedly warned that the effects of climate change are already impacting on poor countries around the world, especially in Africa and Asia where the frequency and severity of natural disasters are increasing. The parties preparing for the Copenhagen summit will next meet in Poznan, Poland, in December.

IRIN 

As UN climate talks enter their next round in the Ghanaian capital Accra, WWF encourages governments to have the Olympic spirit in mind when meeting at the negotiation table. In order to protect people and nature from dangerous climate change and gain sufficient ground on the road towards agreeing a new global climate treaty in Copenhagen in 2009, the Olympic motto “swifter – higher – stronger” has to guide the discussions.

“Progress on substance at the negotiations in Accra must be swifter, the level of ambition by both developed and developing countries higher, and the measures to reduce CO2 emissions stronger”, says Kim Carstensen, Director WWF Global Climate Initiative. “In order to finish the race against climate change with a gold medal, negotiators will have to put concrete ideas and detailed proposals on the table, lifting the debate from playing tactics to talking substance.”

While previous climate talks in Bangkok and Bonn earlier this year were focused on negotiation procedures and on putting together wish lists of issues to be discussed, negotiators in Accra can show their skills in a different discipline: consolidate strong proposals on climate finance, technology transfer, adaptation measures or mitigation policies and work out the details of the most innovative and ambitious options.

“We see a few strong contenders coming to Accra with concrete proposals in their bags, credible due to a decent set of domestic policies on climate change, and ready to craft new alliances for progress”, says Kathrin Gutmann, Policy Coordinator WWF Global Climate Initiative. “Well prepared countries like Norway or South Africa have been in great shape recently, while the US or Japan lag behind and can’t win medals if they stick to old blocking tactics and waste their talent as usual.”

The emerging economies, led by South Africa and Mexico, are overtaking traditional leaders like the EU in terms of courage, creativity and political will. At the recent G8 summit in Japan they showed real leadership by committing to serious deviations from business as usual emission paths, while most industrialized countries have so far failed to commit to reduction targets which would help keeping global warming below the danger-threshold of 2°C.

“While athletes in Beijing are breaking world records in running or swimming, negotiators in Accra can break the deadlock between developed and developing countries”, says Diane McFadzien, Programme Coordinator WWF Global Climate Initiative. “Ultimately all nations need to tackle climate change together, and in Accra the rich countries can live up to their full potential, ideally led by an EU that finds back to its old strength and teams up with the emerging economies.”

WWF

Background:
From 21 to 27 August, governments gather in the Ghanaian capital Accra to continue critical negotiations about a new global climate treaty. The Bali roadmap, agreed at UN climate talks last December, mandates these negotiations to conclude at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. However, after too little progress at recent talks in Bonn in June and a stalemate between developed and developing countries at the G8 summit in July, the political process has suffered major delays and is far from where it should be at this stage. Accra marks an opportunity to gain ground on the road to Copenhagen and speed up negotiations on crucial building blocks of the new global treaty, such as emission reductions, mitigation mechanisms, finance flows or technology transfer. After the previous talks focused mainly on negotiation procedures and on wish lists of issues to be discussed, Accra provides a perfect stage for progressive players to move the negotiations forward by putting substantial proposals with concrete ideas for the new global treaty on the table.

Key Issues:
Accra can be a positive turning point in the climate negotiations, as more and more parties are lowering their guards and get ready to stop beating about the bush. “Before you can negotiate a contract you need to write a comprehensive and fully-fledged draft,” says Kim Carstensen, Director of the WWF Global Climate Initiative. “Presenting concrete ideas and submitting real substance will be the benchmark for credible leadership in Accra.”

At the G8 summit, the emerging economies took a very pro-active stance and made an offer which would break the deadlock at the negotiation table if the industrialized countries accepted it. “Rich nations have to cut 25-40% of their emissions by 2020 and 80-95% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels,” says Kathrin Gutmann, Policy Coordinator of the WWF Global Climate Initiative. “In turn emerging economies must commit to substantial deviations from business as usual emissions domestically, and to deep emission cuts globally.” Although these targets are not on the agenda in Accra, WWF supports the emerging economies in their progressive stance, expecting other governments to signal support for such an ambitious package.

The fact that the talks are held in Africa, the world’s poorest region which is highly vulnerable to climate change, has to be reflected in the negotiations. “Developing countries need an encouraging signal that industrialized nations will live up to the responsibility resulting from their historic emissions,” says Diane McFadzien, WWF Climate Policy Coordinator for Asia Pacific. “The EU is in the best position to earn the laurels for breaking the deadlock, but must overcome its recent climate fatigue to create fresh dynamics.”

WWF

Police personnel on August 5, 2008 stormed the premises of Radio Gold, an Accra-based pro- opposition FM station leashing out violence on persons, including a staff of the station and a newspaper graphic designer.
 
Fred Ayensu Lindsay, the station’s financial controller and Mohammed Caliph, a graphic designer of the Daily Guide, a privately-owned newspaper were assaulted and Lindsey was briefly detained at the Dansoman police station in Accra.

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that the incident  occurred after  Radio Gold  had interviewed an activist of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) who some members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) brought to the radio station for allegedly engaging in an electoral fraud in the ongoing national voters’ registration exercise.

  The interview had drawn a large crowd to the radio station, including an official of the NPP who was not happy that the suspect was not handed over to the police instead. He then decided to unilaterally turn over the suspect to the police. But this did not go down well with the NDC supporters and resulted in confusion.

The correspondent said it was at this time that the police stormed the station and began beating people indiscriminately. Lindsay who was then speaking on his cell phone was assaulted for allegedly filming the incident, and taken to the police station. Lindsay was later accused of obstructing the work of the police.

The police had since denied that they went to the station to harass the journalists, but had rather detailed to the area because of an armed robbery.
 
Meanwhile, there has been widespread condemnation of the action of the police.  The Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) has also appealed to the public to resort to the National Media Commission if they have any grievances they may have with the media.

Media Foundation for West Africa