Perspective: Environment in Ghana

While at the Mountain Paradise Lodge last week, I had an opportunity to speak with the owner and manager, Mr. Toni. A true hotelier, he not only understood hospitality, but he was also very passionate about the environmental preservation of the surrounding area. 

I asked Mr. Toni for insight into the Ghanaian perspective on the environment. His answer was sobering; he said, specifically, that many people here see the environment as “Nature’s gift to be consumed unsustainably.” Why, I asked. Toni summed up the problem to lack of education: essentially, a lack of training and education on why and how to sustain the environment for their kids and their kids’ kids. Some of the problems, for example, include:

• Deforestation—because no one replants the trees that are cut down for firewood
  
• Inorganic chemicals and harmful fertilizer—because it’s easier and quicker to spray chemicals than to weed, and no one realizes that farmers are dying at an earlier age each year because of the exposure to these chemicals
• Poison hunting—the easiest way for hunters to now hunt game is through poison: they simply set the traps and then take the animals. Since the hunters are selling the meat to others, the safety of the meat isn’t really a concern to them.
  

Toni said that many of these problems permeate from governmental issues. Specifically, no politician wants to be the one who presents an expensive, energy-intensive and long-term focused solution when the profitable quick-fixes are available today. Thus, some politicians encourage the use of chemicals for farming. Others just avoid the topic altogether.  

To only increase disadvantageous solutions, there is also international political pressure. Take, for example, the Volta Dam Project. China is funding a dam and hydro-electric plant to be built in the lush, tropical area of the Volta region that will flood and harm/destroy much of the surrounding habitat. 

What’s the solution? When I asked Toni this, he responded that help needs to come from inside and outside. An internal education initiative is needed with outside support—financial and political.

Looking back, it was a conversation to remember. It was incredible to meet someone in my industry who is truly passionate about making a long-lasting, positive difference in the world. And Toni acts on these passions—he’s started up a volunteering initiative with a local village, has adopted nearby land to protect it, and more. Pairing passion to make a difference with the action to get there—a goal for many of us. 

* Online article on Ghana's environment from a privately owned Ghanaian newspaper

Note: Apologies on the lack of external support—it was extremely difficult to find online information about Ghana’s environmental conditions.