Polluter Pays Principle Needs Legislative Backing For Healthy Environment - NGO

Environmental pollution

By Patrick Baidoo

Ghana’s drive towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on sanitation could be described as appalling, looking at the current 14 percent threshold as against the 2015 United Nations deadline target of 54 percent.

Climate change: Is Africa Rising To The Challenge?

A climate change situation

Source: Paul Frimpong

Climate change is already a global cancer inhibiting the well-being of humans and economic growth throughout the world. Climate change refers to a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer).

Ghanaians Deserve Information About Mining, Oil Earnings

Source: Revenue Watch Institute

Ghana has taken important steps to improve mining governance and limit corruption, but the government still fails to give citizens the information they need to make sure they are getting a good deal from mining companies, according to a new governance index released today.

Africa’s Great Lakes Region To Enjoy Peace and Economic Development

Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General

Source: UNIC

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim recently ended a three-day historic mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Uganda, pledging that both of their global organizations will work closely together to bring peace, security, and economic development for the Great Lakes region that has for so long not experienced the fruits of prosperity.

Community Report Card Tool For Social Accountability In WASH Projects

Ato Quansah, Social Accountability Ambassador

Over the years, one common phenomenon associated with the implementation of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects in Ghana is the failure of service beneficiaries (community members) to demand for accountability from the service providers.

Toilet – Very Essential Of Every Home

A HIPC fund toilet at Nima

Source: Dzifa Azumah

Do landlords know that it is an offence not to provide toilet facilities in their houses before renting them out?

UNICEF, Japan Support Ghana To Prevent Cholera

Sherry Ayittey

Source: UNICEF

A new US$1.5 million partnership between UNICEF Ghana and the Government of Japan will help prevent and respond to cholera outbreaks in Ghana.

Universal Birth Registration Could Be Lasting Legacy Of AU’s 50th Anniversary

The 50th ‘birthday’ of the African Union is a chance to make a lasting commitment to the continent’s children by giving every child a name and legal status, UNICEF said today. “Ghana’s most important resource is its children,” said acting UNICEF Ghana representative Sarah Hague.

Stopping Open Defecation With Shit Calculation Tool of CLTS

Calculated shit per person per year

Source: Emmanuel Ato Quansah

Extension Service Specialist

Community Water and Sanitation Agency

Upper West Region

Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is a sanitation promotion concept based on stimulating a collective sense of disgust and shame among community members as they confront the crude facts about mass Open Defecation (OD) and its negative impacts on the entire community (Kar and Chambers 2008).

Fight Against Malaria Goes To The Bedrooms of Ghana

Preventing malaria and saving lives with mosquito nets

Source: UNICEF

An innovative Hang Up Your Net Campaign, conducted by the Ghana Health Service, with support from UNICEF and DFID, has led to a dramatic increase in mosquito net ownership to 90 percent from 60 per cent in 2011 in Northern Ghana, according to an independent evaluation released today by UNICEF.

Ghana Uses New Technology To Dispose Off Human Excreta

A digester fitted on a vehicle

Source: Francis Tandoh

Ghana will soon use digesters in the treatment of waste products from humans, according to Simpson Anim Boateng, Metropolitan Health Director for the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).

SAA Coordinator Seeks New Commitments Toward Three HIV/ AIDS Zeros

Mr. Luc Armand Bodea (1st R)

By Patrick Baidoo

The Coordinator of Society for AIDS in Africa (SAA)– Ghana, Luc Armand Bodea has called all governments, donors, institutions and all persons to renew commitments to achieve a zero HIV/AIDS infection target as pertaining to the HIV/AIDS - THREE ZERO’s.

West African Countries Urged To Mitigate Climate Change Negative Impacts

Arba Diallo

Source: Francis Tandoh

A top official of the Global Water Partnership West Africa (GWP/WA) Tuesday urged countries within the sub-region to cooperate in the management of water resources to mitigate the negative impact of climate change.

Feature: Triggering A Sensitive Stage In Community Led Total Sanitation Concept

A CLTS facilitor using approved technics

Source: Ato Quansah

Extension Services Specialist

CWSA, UWR

With less that 1000 days for Ghana to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) sanitation targets of 54%, the country has 14% sanitation coverage which implies that only 14 out of every 100 Ghanaian have improved sanitation (UNICEF & WHO, 2012).

Developing Countries Will Not Be Complicit In Farce Leading To A Warmer World

Source: IIED

Inaugurating its first negotiation session, as the new chair of the group of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Mr. Prakash Mathema from Nepal, urges Parties to show leadership to achieve real and substantial progress on the negotiation of a 2015 treaty and to close the mitigation gap before 2020.

Upper West CWSA Promotes Social Accountability

Ato Quansah, Social Accountability Ambassador

Source: Ato Quansah

Extension Services Specialist

Upper West Region

As part of efforts of the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) in the Upper West Region to ensure effective implementation of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) projects, the agency has intensified its social accountability awareness campaign.

Feature: From Fear To Hope - Getting It Right In Somalia

Donald Kaberuka, African Development Bank - President

Source: AfDB

It has been two decades of mayhem, chaos and bloodletting in Somalia.  A child born at the onset of the Somali crisis is now twenty one.  Somalia has still a long way to go: the Al Shabaab are defeated, but they are not yet fully eliminated, and they still have the capacity to kill and to maim.

Feature: Using Technology to Sustain Hand Washing With Soap in Rural Areas

Farmer uses a tippy tap

Source: Emmanuel Ato Quansah
Extension Services Specialist
Community Water and Sanitation Agency
Upper West Region

Hand washing with soap remain as low as 5% to 15% at critical times (Scott et al, 2003). Though studies have shown that proper Hand Washing With Soap (HWWS) or ash can reduce the incidence of diarrhoeal disease by 42-47 percent (Curtis and Cairncross, 2003), lack of access to water supply is a barrier to HWWS.

ILO Report Shows Why Social Protection Is Crucial To Tackle Child Labour

Source: UN Information Centre, Accra

Measures such as cash transfers or health insurance programmes can sometimes determine whether a child spends the day studying and playing, or working and being deprived of a fair chance at a decent future.

Ghana/Tunisia Hosts 2015 Biggest AIDS Conference

Source: SAA

Ghana or Tunisia would be hosting the 18th International Conference on HIV/AIDS and STI’s in Africa in 2015 which is the continents biggest conference on the disease with 10,000 delegate participation.

WaterAid, UNILEVER Provide Birim North Communities With Portable Water, Sanitation Facilities

Situation before the borehole was mechanized at Adausena

By Patrick Baidoo

About 4,000 inhabitants of the Adausena, Nyame Bekyere and Pankese communities in the Birim North District of the Eastern Region have heaved a sigh of relief after being provided with potable water and sanitation facilities from WaterAid and UNILEVER Ghana to revert their daily hustle of roaming for hours to access these basic services from unhealthy sources.

CWSA Upper West Holds CLTS Training Workshop

CLTS trigerring stage

By Emmanuel Ato Quansah, Extension Services Specialist

CWSA, UR

finalato@yahoo.com.uk

The Upper West Division of Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA - UWR) has held a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) training workshop for its staff and partners.

Social Audit Tool for Social Accountability in WASH Projects (Part 3)

The Author

By Emmanuel Ato Quansah

Extension Services Specialist, CWSA - UWR

finalato@yahoo.co.uk

            

It is an undeniable fact that one way of ensuring efficiency is by the demand for accountability. With the over growing interest in ensuring efficiency in service delivery for sustainability, issues of accountability has strongly emerged in varying forms. Social accountability stands as one of the critical issue of concern to almost every investor particularly in the WASH sub-sector of the global economy today. Notwithstanding, the concept, its associated tools and benefits are not fully known by many sector players.

Ghana Pro-actively Streamline’s Urban Communities and Growth - Minister

Some participants at the forum

By Patrick Baidoo

Continuous migration of persons living in rural communities to settle in urban centres across Ghana has resulted in a 52% urban population growth. This means that there are more people living in urban communities than rural enclaves presently.

Minister Hails Sanipath Study at NLLAP 32

Collins Dauda, Minister of Water Resources, Works & Housing

Source: RCN

Alhaji Collins Dauda, the Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing hailed the SaniPath project study, when he delivered a short address on the theme of the study, ‘Assessmentof Fecal Exposure Pathways in Low-Income Urban Settings’, at the 32nd edition of the National Level Learning Alliance Platform (NLLAP) forum in Accra.

Sanitation Court To Be Established In Kumasi

Residents of Kumasi who litter the environment especially the central business area could face prosecution as city authorities set up sanitation courts to deal with the canker.

Developing Nations Put Climate Change At Heart Of Plans

Source: IIED

Representatives from governments in Africa and Asia have formed a network to support their efforts to factor climate change into their development plans.

The group developed its plans at the 7th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change, which ended in Dhaka, Bangladesh, recently.

The Government Group Network on Climate Change Mainstreaming and Development includes members from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, The Gambia and Zanzibar – and will expand to include other countries.

Book Shows How Extractive Industries Can Address Conflict And Build Trust With Communities

Source: IIED

Giant mining, timber, and oil and gas projects provide lessons in how companies can act to address conflict and build trust in communities their activities affect, according to a new book from the International Institute for Environment and Development.

Invest in the future: Defeat Malaria - UN

Ban Ki Moon

Source: Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General

Since world leaders adopted the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, a broad partnership of governments, United Nations entities, philanthropies and businesses have combined to protect hundreds of millions of people from malaria.

World Bank Endorses Historic Goals to End Extreme Poverty

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim

Source: World Bank

The Development Committee have endorsed the World Bank Groups goal to end extreme poverty within a generation as ambitious, saying that this endeavour by the Bank was a historic opportunity to make a difference.

New MD for Ghana Water Company

Kwaku Godwin Dovlo, Ag. MD, GWCL

Source: GNA

The Board of Directors of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has in line with a directive from the Presidency, appointed Mr Kwaku Godwin Dovlo as the Acting Managing Director of the Company with effect from Friday 12th April 2013.