Accra, Aug. 31, GNA - A senior official of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has called for the streamlining of environmental issues into national planning programmes. "If environmental issues are well factored into our planning as a country then we could avoid all the challenges facing the environment," Mr Ebenezer Appah-Sampong, Chief Programme Officer in charge of Environmental Impact Assessment at the EPA, said. He was speaking when members of the Ghana Environmental Journalists Association (GEJA) paid a working visit to the offices of the EPA on Tuesday to learn about their operations. Mr Appah-Sarpong said environmental issues and challenges could only be co-managed adding that there was the need for a network approach to solving such issues.

He explained that the EPA collaborated with institutions like the media, the Town and Country Planning Department, the District Assemblies, the Ghana Police Service and other stakeholders to effectively manage environmental issues. Mr Appah-Sarpong advised journalists to pay more attention to planning and explained that effective planning of projects and programmes could help deal with the environmental problems. He stressed the need for the media to properly understand the environment and how human activities affected it to enable them to write good articles.

Other officials who interacted with the journalists spoke about the history of the Agency, climate change and noise among other environment issues.

Mr Emmanuel Salu, Deputy Director at the EPA, lauded the initiative by GEJA and called for frequent interactions to facilitate knowledge sharing.