Bolgatanga, March 4, GNA- Sixteen schools in some selected first and second-cycle Schools in the Upper East Region have jointly launched their Eco-Clubs, which aim at championing the cause of climatic change. The Project which is the initiative of the Community Exchange programme run by the United Kingdom and Ghana through the British Council, is to target the youth and orient them to be environmentally conscious by encouraging them to plant trees, stop bush burning and indiscriminate littering of the environment.

Under the project, the selected Schools would be taken through proposal writing on Climatic Change to enable them to get funding from the British Council through the Voluntary Services Oversees (VSO) to undertake selected projects on Climatic Change in their respective schools. Mr. Epsona Ayamga, Bolgatanga Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), who was full of praise for the Programme, said it would help in fighting desertification and environmental degradation which was predominant in the three Northern Regions.

He appealed to members of the club and the youth in the Region to take the issue of climate change seriously since they were the future leaders and stood to derive benefits from engaging in climate change projects.

Mr. Ayamga lamented that climate change had already brought a lot of untold hardships to the people in the three Northern Regions, where some people burnt the environment indiscriminately, thereby rendering the land unproductive, which also made it difficult for the people to get fertile land to farm leading to rural-urban migration.

He reminded the people in the Region to take a cue from the 2007 floods in the three northern Regions that caused a lot of destruction to human life and property, saying that the experience was an indication that the people should not joke with matters concerning climate change. The MCE attributed the perennial low rainfall pattern and the loss of aqua life in the three Northern Regions to negative human activities, and asked the residents of the area to put a stop to it.

He advised the youth to embark on tree-planting with all seriousness, and said the Forestry Commission, Municipal and District Assemblies in the Region would supply them with seedlings for the exercise. The MCE assured the Eco-Clubs that the Assemblies in the Region through their Sanitation Units in collaboration with personnel from the ExChange programme in the Northern parts of Ghana would continue to provide capacity building programmes and other forms of support to ensure the sustenance of the Climate change programme.

"You must also sensitize the people in your communities including your parents, friends, chiefs and youth groups to get actively involved in the crusade to curb this environmental problem," he said. Mr. Lansah Musah, Media Coordinator of the ExChange Programme of Ghana, said the project would be replicated in the rest of the schools in the Upper East Region next year. 4 March 10