The Social Entrepreneurship Hub-Ghana (SE Hub) in collaboration with the Businesses in Environmental Stewardship Network (BESNet) of A ROCHA Ghana have held a day’s workshop for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Western Region to understand and appreciate green economy in Ghana.
The workshop was geared toward motivating participants to be innovative and adopt greener ways of doing business, build skills to assess their impact and dependencies to make informed decisions, as well as encourage participants to serve as advocates for green economy and circular economy.
Participants were taken through topics like, introduction to natural capital assessment, definition of green economy and the role of businesses with group works on how they can apply lessons learnt to their business operation to boost revenue and performance.
Madam Mina Pokua Agyemang, Corporate Engagement Officer of A ROCHA Ghana, mentioned greenhouse gas emissions, land management, waste, disturbances (noise, light), water extraction and management, ground water discharge and other discharges to the soil as natural capital impacts.
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She indicated that “business activities could be dependent on specific features of natural capital and for that matter knowing how changes affect business activities help you identify the cost of doing business”.
Mr Micheal Kofi Abrokwa, Energy Expert for the SE Hub who took participants through Green Economy, said the impacts of climate change was not evenly distributed as poorest countries and people would suffer earliest and more, while the benefits of strong and early action on climate change outweighed the costs.
According to him, climate change threatens the basic elements of life for people around the world such as access to water, food production, health, and use of land and the environment.
He noted that Ghana has experienced one of the highest deforestation rates of two per cent per annum in the world.
“Socially, green economy strategies would lead to a five per cent poverty reduction by 2030, representing two per cent lower level than the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario in 2030,” he emphasized.
He lamented that there were irreversible damages to the environment and hence, the need to embrace green economy policies that were aimed at controlling the society, the economy and the environment.
Mr Abrokwa pointed out that 75 per cent of the investment in the green economy was expected to come from the private sector to complement public sector financing.
