Water Aid to invest over GH¢21m in Ghana’s water, sanitation sector

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

Efia Zakiya

Water Aid Ghana (WAG), an international Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector, has pledged to commit GH¢21,041,249 (£8.8M) in the next five years, to ensure more Ghanaians get access to potable water, improved sanitation and towards hygiene education.
The amount, it says, would be the total financial implication for ensuring 409,550 people gain access to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene services (WASH), through direct service delivery.
Currently though, the WASH Sector is reliant on mainly donor funding, with 90% of the total funding from the sector coming from donors, which have implications of largely donor driven priorities and approaches.
Making these known recently at Kumasi during WAG’s mid-year review workshop, Country Representative (CR) for Water Aid Ghana, Efia Zakiya, said the organisation will also work at providing 57,720 people with access to WASH through their influencing work in the next five years.
“We will ensure relationships with Parliament are strengthened to increase oversight and monitoring of policies in WASH,” she added.
Presenting WAG’s draft country strategy for 2010 to 2015, Efia Zakiya also divulged that the organisation will in the next five years (2010 – 2015) strengthen the capacities of District Water and Sanitation Teams (DWST), to deliver on their mandate in 19 Local Government Authority areas (LGAs) and to provide WASH services to poor people, which she explained will be their post implementation sustainability strategy.
Stating that they will look at WASH in wider development with emphasis on Health, Education and Agriculture, she stated that of the key outcomes expected in the period, “An effective M&E framework will be used by our partners and LGAs to improve sustainability, problem resolution and sector data (data to be disaggregated by sex, age, PWDs, etc.)”
She also disclosed that coordination of the WASH sector will be improved through the implementation of a sector-wide approach programme (SWAp).
Partner skills survey will be conducted to assess relevance to partnerships and ability to utilise Results Based Accountability (RBA), Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), Equity and Inclusion (E&I), Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and replicable technologies, while increased regional partnerships, collaborations and learning will be pursued, the CR added.
WAG’s Country Representative stated that eight additional staff will be employed to add up to its current staff of 17, to ensure they are able to rise up to the task they have set for themselves, specifically speaking of strengthening the organisation’s Tamale work station.
According to her, during the period in question, Water Aid Ghana will give fundraising and M&E a high priority, strengthen people and organisational development, add information technology to their finance function and enhance staff skills and motivation to achieve Country Strategy Programme 5 (CSP5).
“Leadership commits to addressing staff retention and morale, compensation and other  related issues,” she said, adding that a strategic plan will be monitored by means of a new Strategy Oversight Committee (SOC).
Touching on WAG’s key programme shifts for the year, the Ghana CR spoke of a plan to deepen RBA to WASH service delivery, aggressively pursue sanitation work, increase resource allocation to sanitation progressively to 60% by 2015, adopt the CLTS approach to improved sanitation and hygiene and partner with the Environmental Health Division of the Ministry of Health (MoH).
She also spoke of redefinition of relationships based on mandates of institutions and context of WAG’s strategy, increased efforts at rooted advocacy and rights-holder-duty bearer relationships, promotion of effective pro-poor targeting in urban areas, expansion to all 10 regions of Ghana by entering six new LGAs and deepening E&I as an RBA approach.
Water Aid Ghana’s CR further revealed that her outfit will strengthen micro-macro linkages and pro-poor participation in decision making.
Meanwhile, WAG has since 1985 when it entered the country, provided service to over 800,000 poor people, currently works in 13 LGAs in seven regions with eight NGO partners and three CSO networks.
Also, as a lead sector NGO, WAG has influenced key sector reforms and policy formulation and contributed significantly to sector capacity development and creation of CSO networks such as the Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) and the Ghana Watsan Journalists Network (GWJN).

UNEP launches award for young environmental journalists

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has launched a major new award – the Young Environmental Journalist Award Africa, for radio, television, print and online journalists aged 25 to 35 years from African countries.

Announcing the new award on Monday, UNEP particularly encouraged African female journalists to apply by submitting one radio, television, print or online report (in English or French) on an environmental issue.

According to a statement publicising the award, written articles must not exceed 3000 words, while radio or television reports should be no longer than six minutes.

The award is made possible through funding support from the Government of the United States of America, while the prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to the USA, where the winner will follow a specially-designed “green itinerary”, interacting with leading environmental projects, green economy projects, scientists and public figures.

The winner will be selected by an independent jury, while the award ceremony will take place during the 26th Session of the UNEP Governing Council / Global Ministerial Environment Forum to be held in Nairobi, Kenya from 21 - 25 February 2011.

The statement urged journalists to apply through the award website www.unep.org/yeja before 31^st December 2010.

UNEP views that “The winner of the Young Environmental Journalist Award will be a new voice for the environment – one that will help to shape opinion in Africa, and beyond, in years to come.”

UNEP, Asian and African Development Banks to invest $500m in clean energy

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank and the Global Environment Facility, have launched a Seed Capital Assistance Facility (SCAF) to help stimulate renewable energy and energy efficiency ventures in the developing world.
So far six fund managers have been engaged in Asia and Africa, employing a range of early stage investment strategies, says a press release issued by UNEP Wednesday, which announced the facility.
The six funds engaged so far by SCAF are aiming for a total initial capitalisation of half a billion U.S. dollars, of which $55 million will be for early stage seed investing, discloses the statement, which adds that SCAF will invest $10 million to help get this needed early stage capital and support to clean energy entrepreneurs.
It says in China, SCAF is helping fund manager Conduit Ventures set up a clean energy incubation centre with local partners, such as the Shanghai Science and Technology Investment Corporation, to provide entrepreneurs with business development, technology commercialisation support and seed financing.
In India as well, work is underway with Yes Bank to create a syndicate of financial institutions that will invest seed and follow-on capital in socially and environmentally oriented small and medium-sized enterprises.
Also in India, SCAF is helping IndiaCo, a fund manager listed on the Mumbai stock exchange, set up a new fund targeting the energy efficiency sector. Meanwhile, two regional funds are also in development with SCAF support, which are the Low Carbon Accelerator Asia Fund and the E+Co Asia Fund.
According to the UNEP, in Africa the African Development Bank has added additional funds from its own resources to expand SCAF’s reach on the continent.
“Several projects are under evaluation, with SCAF already engaged with the Evolution One Fund in South Africa to provide seed financing to wind farm developments along the Eastern Cape region,” it says.
Commenting on this development, wind farm developer Mark Tanton said, “SCAF has empowered us to grow our business by providing access to scarce early stage financing and ensuring that meaningful skills transfer takes place within the country, a critical ingredient for the long term growth and sustainability of our business.”
Also remarking on the facility, Linda Zheng of Conduit Ventures said, “SCAF is helping us build a domestic platform for nurturing low carbon technology companies across China. We expect these centres to create globally competitive companies targeting the low carbon economy.”
For his part, Mr. Rana Kapoor, Founder / Managing Director and CEO of Yes Bank, said, “Since inception we have focused on integrating sustainability within our business focus and I truly believe that this opportunity to associate with SCAF will enable us to further deliver value to all our stakeholders in accordance with our Responsible Banking philosophy.”
UNEP’s Executive Director Achim Steiner, however observed that “Entrepreneurs can transform markets, but the environment for entrepreneurship remains weak in many countries, particularly in the energy sector,” adding,. “New ventures often lack business development support and seed financing is hard to secure.”
But according to ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda, “Although the financial markets are now taking low carbon energy sectors like wind power and solar energy quite seriously in the Asian region, there is still reluctance to engage too early.”
UNEP believes though that SCAF will address these issues by helping private equity fund managers provide seed financing and business assistance to early stage clean energy projects and enterprise developments.
Donald Kaberuka, President of the African Development Bank, on his part said that this facility is helping African entrepreneurs “jump-start new ventures aimed at solving the continent’s energy deficit.” SCAF is bringing vitality to Africa’s high potential renewable energy sector, he said.
In view of the fact that the two biggest challenges that investors face in providing seed capital financing to early stage projects and companies are the higher transaction costs and insufficient returns offered by these small, less mature and more risky ventures, SCAF is designed to address the two issues, offering investment fund managers two types of cost-sharing support for those willing to include a seed investment window within their overall investment strategy.
SCAF’s “enterprise development support” shares costs associated with sourcing deals, enterprise development services and seed scale investment transactions. As part of this arrangement, the fund manager commits to providing enterprise development services to qualified local entrepreneurs to identify and develop a pipeline of early stage clean energy investment opportunities.
The facility also offers “seed capital support” to offset the hurdle of higher perceived risks and lower expected returns when dealing with early stage clean energy project and enterprise developments. SCAF support ranges from10% to 20% of each seed capital investment and is used to cover some of the elevated project development costs that normally are financed by the project developer, such as technical assessments, environmental impact analyses and other aspects of the permitting process.
SCAF is implemented through the United Nations Environment Programme, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank, with support from the Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Foundation. Meanwhile, technical support for SCAF activities is provided by the Nairobi office of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.

Fish catches from the sea to reduce by 2050

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

A report released Tuesday by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), predicts that by 2050 fish catches will have decreased in nearly all areas.

The report - environmental and economic health of the North West Pacific—present and future, underlines growing concern from pressures such as pollution, over-fishing and climate change.

It says by 2050 most of the top predators will have all but disappeared and the region’s fisheries will be heavily dominated by smaller species lower down the food chain such as Japanese scad—a fish that is on average only 25cm in length.

Other predicted changes include a continued and widespread increase in nitrogen levels, especially in the eastern part of the North West Pacific region.

This is linked with discharges of wastewaters and agricultural runoff from the land and, to an extent, emissions from vehicles and shipping.

A press statement announcing the new report says nitrogen can trigger algal blooms, which in turn can poison fish and other marine creatures as well as contribute to the development of so called ‘dead zones’ - areas of sea with low oxygen concentrations.

The Marine Biodiversity Assessment, on behalf of countries to the North-West Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP), also flags concerns over the rise in alien invasive species, transported to the region from elsewhere often in or on ships, and a rise in extinctions of native marine species.

The report says: “By 2050 invasive species are predicted to increase towards the north (near the polar areas) in the region. Extinctions are predicted to be most prevelant in the marine area between Japan and Korea and the northern area offshore of Russia.”

Why will extinctions happen?

Explaining why extinctions will happen, the statement says “There is already evidence that concentrations of aragonite is falling across the region as C02 concentrations increase - a trend that is set to continue and at ever lower depths unless global greenhouse gas emissions are significantly reduced.”

It indicates that shell-building marine organisms such as corals and copepods at the base of the food chain which will be affected as a result of rising concentrations of C02 called acidification need minerals like aragonite to make their calcium skeletons.

In his reaction to the report, Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “Decoupling growth from rising levels of pollution is the number one challenge facing this generation - this is nowhere more starkly spotlighted than in the current and future health of the world’s sea and oceans”.

“Multi-trillion dollar services, including fisheries, climate-control and ones underpinning industries such as tourism are at risk if impacts on the marine environment continue unchecked and unabated. Governments are rising to the challenge through actions under regional seas programme. This, and 17 other companion reports, underline that ambition and actions now need to match the scale and the urgency of the challenge,” he added.

The NOWPAP report, one of 18 Regional Seas reports released Tuesday at the 10^th Meeting of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, has been compiled by UNEP to support the governments of China, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation who are signatories to NOWPAP.

Way Forward

The report makes a series of recommendations in order to boost sustainable development in the region, accelerate a transition to a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy and contribute to meeting the poverty-related Millennium Development Goals.

Meanwhile, it is largely envisaged that moving forward on preparing National Programmes of Action (NPAs) for the protecting the environment from land-based activities will be key.

To that end, the Republic of Korea has already completed and submitted its NPA in 2006, while the Russian Federation has one for the Arctic which could be extended,.

In 2007, Japan also enacted an equivalent of the NPA: the Basic Act on Ocean Policy, and established a legal system which regulates land-based activities in order to protect the marine environment, while China has an NPA under preparation.

The United Nations Environment Programme opines that countries should adopt and act on international provisions of the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments: one important step towards cutting introductions of alien invasive species.

However, only the Republic of Korea has ratified the treaty although Japan has signaled it is keen to turn the ballast water convention into national law.

The challenge, which is underlined in the report with shipping figures, indicates that since 1990, growth in total shipping traffic in the region has grown from 5 million tons in 1995 to over 20 million tons in 2008. In China alone, it has grown from 2.5 million tons to close to 15 million over the same period.

According to UNEP, extending marine protected areas from the current 87, covering around four million hectares - well managed marine protected areas can for example improve spawning rates and fish stocks, as well as implementing the Food and Agricultural Organisation’s Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.

The Code of Conduct, which currently has Japan and the Republic of Korea being the best adherents, covers such issues as regulation and monitoring of fish stocks and fishing gear as well as embodying the precautionary principle for stocks.

At present, around 30 per cent of fish stocks in the region are classed as exploited and around 30 per cent are over exploited. Over 25 per cent are considered collapsed and the rest are classed as ‘rebuilding’.

The UNEP press statement adds too that if climate change is unchecked, surface sea temperatures could rise from around 14 degrees Celsius to over 16 degrees Celsius by 2100, with important implications for coral reefs and other temperature-sensitive marine organisms.

The Northwest Pacific Action Plan (NOWPAP) was adopted in 1994 by the four Member States, the People’s Republic of China, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation as a part of the UNEP Regional Seas Programme. The implementation of NOWPAP is financed mainly by contributions from the Members.

The Northwest Pacific region features coastal and island ecosystems with spectacular marine life and commercially important fishing resources and is also one of the most densely populated parts of the world, resulting in enormous pressures and demands on the environment.

The overall goal of the NOWPAP is the wise use, development and management of the marine and coastal environment for human populations, while securing the region's sustainability for future generations.

Touring 150,000 of World’s Most Spectacular Nature Sites Now Possible From An Armchair

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has joined forces with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to create protectedplanet.net – an interactive, social media-based website that provides in-depth information on both the leading lights and hidden gems of the conservation world.
In view of this, touring 150,000 of the world’s protected areas from an armchair is now possible with just the click of a mouse.
A press statement from the UNEP says by using the latest satellite images, users can pinpoint individual protected areas – such as national parks or marine reserves - and zoom in for information on endangered species, native plant life or types of terrain.
Released Tuesday, the statement also says that Protected Planet further offers visitors the opportunity to upload photographs of their trips to protected areas, write travelogues of what they saw and experienced for Wikipedia and recommend places of interest nearby -information that can be shared through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.
According to the statement issued in Nagoya, Japan jointly with the IUCN, this in turn might inspire others to make the journey, thus bringing much needed income to communities in often poor and sometimes remote areas of the globe.
It adds that the Ecotourism industry is growing fast and currently captures $77 billion of the global tourism market, and that “As concern about global warming increases, more tourists than ever are opting for eco-friendly holidays, including visits to protected areas.” “According to Travel Weekly magazine, sustainable tourism could grow to 25% of the world’s travel market by 2012, taking the value of the sector to approximately $473 billion a year,” the statement quotes.
On his part, Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “National parks and protected areas represent one key and successful response to conserving and managing this planet’s nature-based assets. And in a way that can generate revenues and livelihoods for local communities.”
He adds that “Indeed by some estimates, $1-$2 billion of global tourism is linked to the world’s network of around 150,000 protected sites”.
“But the benefits of well-managed tourism are currently uneven with some parks popular magnets for tourists and others hidden gems that are relatively unknown. Protected Planet has the potential to change this by bringing the world’s protected areas into a living room near you. So whether you are a government official or a scientist or a citizen looking for a holiday of a lifetime, click on www.protectedplanet.net for a new adventure,” he urged.
Also commenting on the new partnership, Nik Lopoukhine, Chairman of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas, said: “National parks and protected areas in many ways support life as we know it on planet Earth. ProtectedPlanet.net will help identify and communicate the many values of protected areas to the world, including for carbon and freshwater, ensuring that the support base for these areas will be broadened.”
Buttressing the view shared by Achim Steiner, the disparity between popular parks and rarely visited ones is highlighted by the Annapurna Conservation Area in Nepal.
Containing some of the highest peaks in the world, Annapurna is Nepal’s largest protected area whose snow-capped peaks and mountain lakes can be viewed on protectedplanet.net.
Between 2000 and 2004, Annapurna received over 260,000 visitors, generating US$7 million in revenue and a share of the income went towards conservation projects with local partners.
Protectedplanet.net, launched Tuesday at the 10th Meeting of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, offers an ‘Explore the World’ function where users can take an online visit to several protected areas.
Alongside familiar names such as the Serengeti in Tanzania or Yellowstone National Park in the United States, there are thousands of lesser-known sites that attract far fewer visitors.
Citing Monte Cristi National Park in the Dominican Republic as an example of unknown tourist destinations, the statement says that although travel websites describe a remote site off the tourist radar, a quick scan on protectedplanet.net reveals diverse habitats of mangroves and beaches with abundance of birdlife, including pink-coloured spoonbills, pelicans and the magnificent frigatebird – a species renowned for its scarlet throat pouch that inflates like a balloon during mating season.
“Protectedplanet.net is about harnessing technology for biodiversity conservation. It showcases the beauty of protected areas and motivates anyone who discovers it to help, from a tourist to a government official”, says Craig Mills, Project Manager of Protected Planet from UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC).
“There is a huge network of people interested in protected areas out there that we haven’t been tapping into, protectedplanet.net provides the place and the tools for them to get involved and do their part”, he added.
According to the release announcing the UNEP/IUCN collaboration, as well as being an information mine for tourists, protectedplanet.net will also offer downloadable information on protected areas for governments, scientists and NGOs working on conservation.
It also foresees that online reports from tourists and visitors including sightings of species have the potential to strengthen that work.
Meanwhile, protectedplanet.net brings together information from all over the internet, including species data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), protected area descriptions from Wikipedia, photos from Panoramio and Flickr and Google maps. The website also expands on the World Database on Protected Areas currently managed by UNEP-WCMC.
It further applies an innovative, ‘Web 2.0’ approach to conservation and will be a powerful tool to help monitor future biodiversity targets.
With half a million photos already on the site, protectedplanet.net has the potential to supply vast amounts of biodiversity information to the global community and, most importantly, to prove that it has never been easier for one person to make a difference to conservation.

Water Aid, Partners Mark Global Handwashing Day at Kumasi

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

Participants at The Workshop

The fact that WaterAid Ghana and its partners were attending a mid-year review workshop at Kumasi as the global community marked Handwashing Day on Friday, did not deter them from marking and observing the day themselves.

Even though the national celebration was held at Ho, the Volta Regional capital, the over 40 participants attending the mid-year review workshop created space in their loaded programme to observe the worldwide celebration, which had as its local theme, “Saving Lives Through Handwashing.”

This they did, by donning ‘T’ shirts and caps made to commemorate the day, practicing proper handwashing at critical moments such as meal time and after using the washroom, and also engaging in a mini celebration, by listening to a statement from the representative of the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) at the workshop.

In the statement to mark the Day, Mr. Kweku Quansah, a Programme officer of the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), explained that the local theme was chosen “because children, especially after five years - close to about 50,000, die as a result of diarrhoea, of which close to 88% are the underlying causes of lack of handwashing by their mothers, by their siblings etc.”

“So the emphasis is on how we can save lives through handwashing with soap,” Mr. Quansah added.

Informing the workshop that the national celebration was ongoing at the same time at the Mfodjo Park in Ho, the EHSD Programme Officer communicated that the national durbar was expected to be addressed by the Vice President John Mahama and also involve a lot of political activities.

He also disclosed to the workshop that simultaneously with the national durbar, there was ongoing, another launch of the Day sponsored by USAID, a United States aid agency and CHF, an organisation concerned with behavioural change, in Accra at the British Council Hall, to enable those who could not take part in the Ho programme still take part in activities marking the day in Ghana.

Mr. Quansah also divulged that other sanitation activities had been planned, such as sanitation advocacy competition activities, explaining, “we want to have what we call the pledge support in global handwashing.”

He elucidated that the pledge support will entail a request of the support of all who attend the national launch to pledge their support for global handwashing in the course of the year, adding that the national celebration also involved a national dialogue for children, which took place in Ho the previous day, October 14.

The programme, he expatiated, brought school children together to express their views on handwashing, saying that radio and television programmes on handwashing will continue this week on some TV and radio stations in the country.

Mr. Quansah also spoke of handwashing stations that will be mounted at markets, lorry stations and other public places across the country, to educate people on the observance of proper handwashing as part of the education drive of his outfit and urged all partners to take part in the activities lined up.

Ghana Cannot Reach Sanitation MDG Target of 54% Despite Major Interventions

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

Despite the massive gains made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target of 78% in water coverage, it is unlikely that Ghana can attain its MDG target of 54% in sanitation by 2015.

This is because the country is seriously lagging behind in improved sanitation coverage, which currently stands at 13% according to the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) made up of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

As a matter of fact, whereas according to Ghana’s Water and Sanitation Sector Monitoring Platform (WSMP), summary sheet for 2009, coverage of the use of improved drinking water for 2008 was 83.8%, it was 12.4% for improved sanitation for the same period (Demographic and Health Survey 2008).

The WSMP 2009 report states; “This indicates that, according to the JMP definition for access to improved drinking water, Ghana continues to be on track to meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for use of improved drinking water which is 78%, but the same cannot be said about improved sanitation, which will be difficult to achieve by 2015 at the current rate of use.”

It rather projects that “coverage for 2015 for improved water and sanitation will be 91.5% and 15% respectively, if progress made between 1990 and 2008 remains constant.

Re-echoing this in an exclusive interview with ghanabusinessnews.com in Kumasi, Friday, Mr. Kweku Quansah, Programme Officer at the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), said with 13% national coverage in sanitation, Ghana is one of the countries with the least coverage in the sub-region of Africa.

Stating that the country needs to move to 54% access to improved sanitation in the next five years (2015), he said “after we have even reached, which we are not too sure, we will still have 46% of Ghanaians who will not have access after the 2015 deadline.”

Affirming that in the unlikely event that Ghana attains a national coverage of 54% in sanitation by 2015 there will still be a large chunk of Ghanaians without access to latrines, he stressed that, that notwithstanding the country cannot afford to fail this time round in upping sanitation coverage, in view of the enormous assistance received from government and development partners for the sector.

“This time round we don’t have any reason to fail; we don’t just have to fail,” he stressed.

Mr. Quansah further stated that “now the international community has realised that Ghana is off track and they are giving us all the necessary support to be able to come back on track in terms of sanitation delivery.”

He said that “now there is increased collaboration between the Government of Ghana and other donors, in terms of technical assistance, in terms of investment, to make sure that Ghana is on track.”

Expatiating on the collaboration, the EHSD programme officer intimated thus: “All around our programming areas, we’ve got a lot of support from UNICEF in terms of capacity building, we’ve got a lot of support from Royal Netherlands Embassy in terms of delivering policies and investment funds and strategic action plans, to be able to really put us on track.”

He also spoke of six development pillars of the current NDC government, one of which is on sanitation, saying that government is so committed that it has supported the sanitation directorate to develop the Ghana compact, which was presented at the High Level Meeting (HLM) in Washington in April this year.

According to Mr. Kweku Quansah, Ghana can also not fail in increasing sanitation coverage, in view of the fact that the Ghana Government has made clear commitments in the compact as to the way forward for sanitation, revised the country’s sanitation policy, developed a National Environmental and Sanitation Strategic Action Plan (NESSAP) and is in the process of finalising the country’s Sanitation Investment Plan.

He stated that all of these “point to the fact that we cannot fail the people because all the political and administrative structures are ripe for us to really move the country forward in terms of sanitation.”

The programme officer added that “on top of this, sanitation has been captured as one of the indicators in the FOAT (Functional Organisational Assessment Tool), which is used in the assessment of districts to give them support in terms of DDF (District Development Fund),” which is part of donor support for the districts.

He also disclosed that Government has now accepted the Polluter Pays Principle policy, which is a system where a lot of funding can be accessed to support sanitation in the country.