A Water Resources Commission (WRC) official has decried the back-to-back climate change whiplash in the five regions in northern Ghana, affecting the lives of at least 5.8 million people.
Jesse Kazapoe, Head of the White Volta Basin Directorate of the WRC, noted on Tuesday during his presentation at the three-day SIDA-CLIMB Better WASH Partnership workshop for journalists that the territory is hit by long spells of drought annually and suddenly followed by devastating floods when the rains set in.
Kazapoe, while prolonged droughts affect food security due to low agricultural yields, they also affect water security as surface water levels drop and groundwater recharge rates decline, leading to low yields in both large and small town water systems within the five regions.
The climate change-water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) workshop was organised in Bolgatanga, the Upper East Regional Capital, by the Belim Wusa Development Agency (BEWDA), a civil society advocacy organisation, and Water Aid Ghana, aimed to hone the skills of journalists, including members of the Ghana WASH Journalists Network (GWJN), in climate change and WASH reporting.
Meanwhile, on the other extreme, the official said the frequent floods, often exacerbated by the spillage of water from the Bagre Dam in Burkina Faso, also create more havoc, destroying water distribution infrastructure, small-town water systems, and farms, with an increase in water-borne diseases.
“Drying of the Volta Basin, shifting rainfall patterns with shorter, more intense wet seasons, rising temperatures faster than the global average at 0.6°C per decade in northern Ghana, and increasing frequency of floods and droughts impact living conditions in the regions negatively,” Kazapoe said.
According to the official, the vulnerable communities, as well as women, children, individuals with disabilities, and displaced people, suffer the worst consequences of climate change.
“For us at the WRC, climate change is ultimately about how the water cycle is changing and how society responds to those changes, because climate change is water change,” he highlighted.
According to him, climate change has become the biggest threat to water security in Ghana, raising the need for irrigation as rainfall becomes unreliable for farming.
Sebastian Mbabugri Agumah, project lead for the SIDA-CLIMB Better WASH Partnership, said the Climate Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment reveals that 500 households in the Bawku West District of the Upper East Region alone experience floods every year, with rainstorms destroying schools, while wildfires have increased and are damaging WASH facilities across the region.
“Women and girls bear the burden, spending up to four hours a day searching for water during the dry season,” Agumah highlighted.