A registered Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in Ghana, Vision or Alternative Development (VALD), is calling on the government to be proactive in its decisions to make any big company found polluting the environment pay heavy fines for the negligence.
Labram M. Musah, Programmes Director of VALD, at a media conference last week, said there is a Global Climate Justice Coalition that has released the liability roadmap on September 22, 2020 to help countries propel big polluters to pay for their negligence.
According to him: “The liability roadmap is a practical tool that seeks to make big polluters pay for the destruction they have and continue to perpetrate on our planet due to the climate crisis they have fueled.”
This was as their pollution activities are affecting the health and wellbeing of many, especially the poor and vulnerable.
The climate crises affects everyone, rich and poor, developed and developing nations, therefore, the time to put an end to climate injustice is now, he said.
Mr Musah indicated that Climate Justice Activists are mobilising signatures to press home their demands that governments in the African Continent take them seriously and hold big polluters liable and make them pay.
“The sign-on letter details the fact that transnational corporations have, for decades, misled the world about the consequences of their products and business practices, exploited local communities, seized our lands and resources, and taken control of our food systems – all for their own benefit,” he added.
This call is already having an impact as in June, two jurisdictions in the United States – Minnesota and Washington D.C. – filed lawsuits against fossil fuel industry actors, including Chevron, Shell, BP and Exxon Mobil.
From Nigeria’s Niger Delta where fossil fuel extraction has led to dead fish littering the coastlines, to South Africa where tribal lands have been poisoned by coal mining, evidence abounds for the big polluters to be held accountable.
Another classic example is the Cyclone Idai – among the worst tropical storms to visit Africa – as a result of warm seas, which can be connected to global warming and climate change.
He said though the epicentre was in central Mozambique, it left a trail of destruction in Madagascar, Malawi and Zimbabwe, killing at least 1,303 people and affected more than three million others.
After that, there has been the worst drought in South Africa in 1,000 years by diminished rainfall; the apocalyptic locust attacks in Kenya and Uganda that now threaten food security in East Africa, and many more happenings which are strange to the African Continent.
Richard Martey, an environmental activist, said Ghana had already started experiencing the negative impacts of the fossil fuel project at Cape 3 Points.
He communities around the Cape 3 Points have been greatly affected, as the areas they fish have become limited, and by that is impoverishing the people.
Mr Martey added that shoreline erosion is evidence of how these big polluters are impacting the environment negatively.
The post Big polluters must pay for havoc they caused the planet -NGO appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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