<<Print>>

The Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, has urged Parliaments across the world to pass key climate change legislations to promote efforts to reduce climate impact particularly on vulnerable nations.

As lawmakers,. the Speaker said Parliaments must pass evidence-based legislation and develop properly funded policies that best met the real needs of their constituents against climate impact.

“As law makers, we must ensure that adequate resources are allocated for the implementation of key policies and decisions to avoid the creation of white elephants in our respective statute books,” the Speaker said.

Mr Alban Bagbin was addressing the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) Global Parliamentary Group (CPG) annual dialogue on the sidelines of the 145th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) assembly in Kigali on Tuesday (Oct 11).

He said as legislators, the passing of key climate change legislation must not merely be a box-checking exercise.

“We can have a lot of ideas but ideas without funding are mere hallucinations.

He emphasized the need to pass evidence-based legislations and develop such policies to address the real needs of the people as that is one sure way of obtaining funding for ideas.

The CVF GPG, which is a non-treaty organisation set up in 2009, is focused on climate change policy in countries that are at the front lines of climate emergency.

The dialogue attracted some Speakers of Parliament and legislators from some of the world’s most climate vulnerable nations to, among others, discuss the best ways they could cooperate and contribute to advance climate actions in their respective nations.

The CVF is currently under the Presidency of Ghana and chaired by the Chairperson of the Environment, Science and Technology Committee of the Parliament of Ghana, Dr Emmanuel Marfo.

Representing Ghana’s Presidency of the CVF, Mr Bagbin said today the environmental threats such as climate change, depletion of fossil fuels and natural resources undermined growth potential and posed existential issues for countries all over the world.

Those challenges, he said, needed urgent global intervention to reverse their impact.

He, therefore, urged Parliaments to consider what they could do to mobilize other key actors to create a lot more awareness of climate impacts.

“In unity, as we are told, lies strength; we can achieve a lot more together than if we leave national institutions, state and global actors to operate in silos,” he said.

As CVF member states, the Speaker said the impacts were more severe as a result of their inefficient adaptive capacities that were exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing geopolitical crises which had further “pushed our vulnerable communities into deeper impoverishment”.

“What is clear however is that no single government agency or entity can by itself safeguard populations against the threat of disaster that the issue of climate change comes with.

“It is imperative that all sectors are included and are made to work together,” he said.

Leverage legislative tools

The Chairperson of the Committee on Land, Agriculture, Livestock and Environment of the Rwanda Parliament, Marie-Alice Uwera Kayumba, said Rwanda, highlighted the devastating impact of climate change on vulnerable nations, including Rwanda.

She, therefore, encouraged legislators to leverage the diverse tools they were equipped with to address the impact of climate change to promote inclusive, sustainable growth to “lead our societies onto the path of climate prosperity”.

“Both adaptation and mitigation strategies to combat impact of climate change called for our legislative support and our policies and functions must serve as a reliable foundation for serving the rights and demands of our countries’ various stakeholders,” she said.

“As lawmakers, we must ensure that adequate resources are allocated for the implementation of key policies and decisions to avoid the creation of white elephants in our respective statute books,” he said.