The Senior Research Associate at IMANI Centre for Policy Education (CPE), Mr Dennis Asare has stressed the need for government to prioritise funding for activities aimed at curbing effects of climate change.
He made the call at a stakeholders’ dialogue to discuss feasible pathways to aligning budget support programmes to the Paris Agreement.
The meeting was held on March 19 in Accra. It provided a platform to dialogue on how to build lasting political commitment for climate-compatible reforms tailored to the Ghanaian context.
The Paris Agreement is an international treaty on climate change that was signed in 2016. The treaty covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance.
The stakeholders’ dialogue was therefore held against the background that budget support instruments by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, African Development Bank and other development partners have served as important fiscal support measures enabling the government to meet its budget financing needs and undertake relevant institutional reforms to achieve sustainable growth and development.
It follows an analysis of budget support programmes by IFIs and the implications for Ghana’s pursuit of climate-compatible growth. The analysis unpacked the political economy challenges at the national and international levels that constrain the integration of climate considerations in budget planning and execution.
According to Mr Asare the dialogue became imperative because “Climate change is a key priority for our development and as international partners are prioritising it in their development programmes, it is important for us to look at, domestically, have we put in the right structures, in term of institutions, regulations, to ensure that some of the support that comes from our international partners better support our budget in terms of our delivery on our climate solutions?”
He explained that, “One of the key things that we noticed in our research is that structurally, because of our macroeconomic challenges, most of government’s focus is on the macroeconomy, then any other issue like climate tends to be a secondary matter. For that matter, we need to have a way of prioritising climate as part of our macroeconomic planning, our fiscal planning as well as all the issues that are related to macroeconomy, because climate issues affect our macroeconomy.”
The Senior Research Associate at IMANI CPE further noted that unfortunately, as far as Ghana is concerned, “in terms of institutional delivery, there are coordination problems, who is leading what? Who is responsible for what? All of those things have not been properly aligned. Also, how we even develop the conditionalities that go into budget support programmes, how do we better prioritise climate to make it a government business? So those are some of the key things that we found out in our research.”
“So, a lot of things are happening and there is a need for us to coordinate all of those issues and make them a key focus for government,” he added.
During the dialogue, the stakeholders from the ministries of Finance, Energy as well as Climate and Sustainability corroborated the findings of IMANI CPE and pledged to put in measures to ensure that climate change is prioritised.
The representative of the Minister of State for Climate and Sustainability acknowledged the need for coordination and proper planning. The representatives of the Ministries of Finance and Energy as well as the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) agreed with the call for prioritisng climate change in the government’s budget and pledged to take it up with their superiors.
Mr Asare said it is important to do so because, it is the way to go in achieving climate compatible growth.
“…even though we need to focus on macroeconomy and livelihood issues, we need to integrate climate in all of that and that will now reflect in all the plans that come from the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies MMDA level to the MDA level and to ensure that we are able to achieve climate compatible growth.
