Context and Cultural Relevance as Related to the Understanding of Environmentalism in Ghana
Upon my initial arrival in Ghana, my breath was taken away by the bright red soil, the lush vegetation and the warm, humid sea air. My concept of Ghana as having a pristine, ideal environment was quickly shattered when I started noticing plastic litter everywhere, eventually observing it clogging up local drainages and witnessing copious amounts washing up on the beach. From a developed world perspective, I found this abhorrent and I was full of questions as to how people could live amongst such filthy surroundings. However, during the next 4 weeks, many of my environmentalist ideals were turned completely upside down as the situation was given some context. I shortly came to find that when people are struggling to get by and their government does not have of an environmental policy, the environment comes last.
I first noticed a lack of environmental concern in Ghana when I asked someone where I should put my plastic water bottle, after I was finished drinking from it. The response of the room manager at the hostel was “in the garbage”. This took me by surprise coming from Edmonton, a city that has a remarkably good waste management program that includes recycling, composting and methane recovery (Harris, 2008). When I examined the label on the bottle, I would not find “please recycle” in print but rather “respect environment”, with a picture of a person throwing the bottle in the trash. This was surprising to me, I thought everyone recycled bottles these days. I would soon come to find that this was but one of countless practices in the country which would come as shocking to a Westerner. A handful of others include the usage of little plastic sachets to distribute 300mL of drinking water and the plastic bags given out with everything taken away from market stands. Not only is the massive employment of these non-biodegradable items bad for the natural environment, but common practice includes not only disposing of them in the trash, but rather throwing them on the ground or incinerating them in rubbage piles on the side of the road. Kwami and Kobi were local people I would talk to who, when I questioned them on their habitually disposing of plastic on the ground, would not express much concern over the littering. I would soon learn that traditionally, waste in Ghana (which historically contained a larger amount of organic material) would be burned or set near streams with the intention of having water carry it to sea (Offeibea, 2005). I began to understand that one of the reasons why Ghana is so dirty is because these traditional methods of waste disposal have been maintained, while waste content has progressed to having larger non-biodegradable portions.
To help discern what is being said about environmentalism in Ghana, I looked for a variety of resources. The first source I went to was the national newspaper, the Daily Graphic. The Graphic is Ghana’s biggest selling independent newspaper, yet it is also state owned. This means that under the constitution, the paper is guaranteed freedom to print articles critical of party policy, while still paying dividends to the government. The price is comparatively more for a Ghanaian than a paper is to a Canadian in Canada, and it available at a cost of .70 Ghana Cidis. When you consider that the average Ghanaian makes 5 Ghana Cidis a day, it is questionable how much information is available to the working class. The first thing I noticed was that, compared to Canadian papers such as the Edmonton Journal or the Globe and Mail, the Daily Graphic Ioffered very little about environmental issues. In fact, when I bought a copy on June 24, 2008, there was apparently no environmental news! This is not to say that there is never environmental news in the Graphic as the July 7, 2008 edition contained an article on the waste management problems in Accra (Turkson, 2008). Rather, the environment does not take precedent as it seems to in the West (as noted by the Globe and Mail’s front page mention of premiers not being in agreement over a Canadian climate change policy, July 17, 2008). Upon visit to the Daily Graphic production site on July 10, 2008, I asked the General Manager, Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh, a few question regarding their environmental policies. His answer was essentially that they do not have one. Papers are not printed on recycled paper nor does a program exist wherein they can be recycled into other paper products. The only reuse of them to Mr. Boadu-Ayeboafoh’s knowledge is in the form of wrapping products in markets. This is a bold statement from what I would argue as one of the largest influences on the Ghanaian population.
At the Graphic printing plant, I noticed they were contracted to print issues of the New Legon Observer, “A Ghana Society for Development Dialogue Publication”. It was in this publication that I discovered traces of a small environmental movement. In the article titled “Environment, Conservation, and Survival of the Species”, Ama Pokua Fenny makes note that “modern lifestyles have had an adverse effect on the environment, mainly from the vast volumes of waste accumulated from the consumption of these products (2008)”. Fenny continues to explore various environmental issues that are making headlines in the West such as unplanned urbanization, but also notes problems that are more specific to the Accra region such as uncontrolled garbage mounds. Fenny proposes that the majority of the environmental crisis in Ghana is a product of the people and the government playing the so-called “blame game”, which she argues is a result the state privatizing garbage collection after a long history of providing solid waste collection (2008). Fenny also mentions that government does not strongly support such sanitation initiatives and as a result, pilot projects (such as the Recycling Task-force launched in July 2004 as part of the government’s “war on 270 tonnes of plastic generated daily” (IRIN, 2004)) are often abandoned half way through (2008). Another point to note is that recycling programs do exist in Accra. In fact, bottles are returned to soft drink manufacturers for reuse and two private recycling plants are currently operating. However, only 2% of all waste in Accra is recycled and because of the high cost involved in sorting waste, the two business ventures are at risk of collapse (Fenny, 2008).
One of the other things I have also noticed while being in Ghana is that vegetarianism as a form of environmentalism is more or less nonexistent. In North America, there is a strong movement to encourage people to adopt a vegetarian lifestyle as a result of it taking less resources to produce vegetation than animals and animal products (Why Vegan?, 2008). Throughout my travels in Ghana, vegetarian items on the menu were sparse and I have yet to find a restaurant that offers a complete vegetarian menu. However, there is a significant difference between the environmental impact of a person eating in Ghana as compared to the average Canadian that is; most of the food in Ghana originates within short distances from where it is consumed. I would estimate that while in Ghana, over 80% of the food I consumed on a daily basis originated from within one hundred miles of Accra. Mango, pineapple and coconut trees are plentiful, as are the root vegetable needed to make several common Ghanaian dishes. As far as animal rights are concerned, animals are treated markedly different in Ghana as most of them are allowed to run free during the day in search of food. This compared to Western practices that see animals kept in appalling conditions which at many times are so intense that the environment is greatly impacted. On a personal level, this part of the trip has been very eye opening as it has allowed me to contextualize the idea of the vegetarian diet. According to Professor Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh (who was a vegetarian for 18 years), Ghanaians see meat eating as a luxury, juxtaposed with the West where organic food is expensive and a hamburger from McDonalds is considered cheap. The West is also having a profound influence on changing Ghanaian eating habits. There are many places where I found pre-packaged, mass produced food from afar, but it seems that the majority of Ghanaians shop at open markets for fresh food. The significance of this is that through maintaining traditional eating habits, Ghanaians are effectively doing the environment a service.
During another conversation with Professor Ansu-Kyeremeh, he remarked that Ghanaian politicians do not have very strong environmental agendas because they are more concerned with “bread and butter issues”. Upon looking at the New Patriotic Party’s website for Incumbent Nana Akufo-Addo, one indeed does not find much of an environmental platform to support his desire to be elected as President in the upcoming December 2008 election. In fact, one day I found myself at an N.P.P. rally wherein I engaged an N.P.P. supporter in conversation about the importance of having a global view on environmental issues. This was not a priority in the man’s mind. In fact, with a recent oil discovery in Ghana, most of the things that were on people’s minds at the rally involved what to do with Ghana’s expected crude production windfall. When I proposed to him that some money should be put into developing clean technologies and recycling plants, his response was: “Why? Climate change is not affecting Ghana”.
Not that I will let one party supporter represent how the country thinks about the environment, the significance is that the party he supports is the party in power. During my conversation with the man at the rally, he mentioned that the ties between the N.P.P. and the Republican Party of the United States were strong. In fact, to illustrate the influence of American political parties in Ghana, the N.P.P. use Red, White and Blue as their party colours and have appropriated an elephant in their logo. Perhaps, hope will come in the form of a progressive new leader from the Developed world with fresh ideas for improving the state of the environment. This could be highly influential in countries like Ghana, where in many ways, people aspire to live like those in the developed world.
Beyond solutions coming from political influences, Fenny proposes some other solutions to Ghana’s environmental woes that include better waste management programs to include recycling and composting (2008). An interesting point to note is that Edmonton only became a world leader in recycling as a result of the Clover Bar Landfill site running out of room and the alternative landfill being unaffordable as an alternative dumping site (Harris, 2008). According to Turkson, the main dumping site in Accra is slated to close in July 2008 with an alternative site expected to last only 18 months (2008). Perhaps this similar situation will present the city of Accra with the opportunity it needs to finally take waste management seriously.
My experiences and research in Ghana present a challenge from a global standpoint. As a Canadian, it has always been easy for me to read the paper and remark on how various countries need to step up to the plate when it comes to their respective environmental concerns. But after living in Ghana and conversing with Ghanaians, I understand how complex of an issue it is. That is not to say environmental issues in developing worlds are hopeless rather, this is where global education becomes imperative. Global citizens should advocate for the sharing of resources and technology because in the end, it is everyone on the planet that will either benefit or suffer from decided environmental practices. Not only do I think it is up to the developed West to share with the developing South, but Canadians can learn a lot from Ghanaians when it comes to environmental issues. For example, when it comes to transportation, Canadians are for the most part incredibly inefficient. Due to a desire for independence and individualism, most Canadians travel in partially-loaded cars and do not utilize public transit. On the other hand, Ghanaians have developed a very efficient for of public transportation. The tro-tro system is a network of vans that function as independently-owned vehicles of mass transit. On any given time of day, tro tros fill the streets at their capacities, carrying people long distances for a very reasonable cost. Granted, many Canadian cities have public transit in the form of busses or trains and the low rates of rider-ship are more likely a result of individual attitudes. But witnessing a tro tro carrying 14 people crowded together represents a community-like attitude that should be aspired to and embraced by the West for the betterment of social society.
When talking to Issac (a Ghanaian participant in EDFX 490) about what we have been able to learn from each other as global citizens, he remarked that before we met in this class, both him and Richard could care less about where plastic ended up. But he admitted that he has changed as a result of the experience and now advocates the responsible disposal of litter out of respect for the environment. When I told him about what is done with plastics in the west, he said that we should bring the methods over. In class, we have been talking about what should be done to help developing countries and I think setting a president on a global scale for recycling consumption reduction are imperative. In the eyes of Ghanaians, the West is seen as ideal because of all of the products we have access to, but the excessive packaging and disposal of these things must be discussed. This is needed in order to curtail a massive amount of waste that is ending up in the environment. The great pacific garbage patch is an excellent example of the result of plastic waste being cast into the environment. If left up to nature, it takes these petrochemical byproducts thousands of years to biodegrade, affecting the well-being of countless species and habitats in the process. It China enforcing a ban on plastic bags is any kind of an indicator, it is only a matter of time that other countries follow suit and adopt more sustainable environmental practices.
It is the responsibility of a global citizen to educate him or herself on how their habits directly affect the lives of others around the globe and it does not stop with the environment. As I learned by traveling to the Liberian Refugee camp, when people live hand to mouth it is hard for them to see the environment as something that should take president. Therefore, what should be advocated by all global citizen educators is the safety and security of people. If that is established, then it will be more likely that the resulting affects of their consumptive habits will be examined. This is a very important notion to inculcate in young students and it can be easily be taught along side the curriculum. Using the framework described by Carlsson-Paige & Lantieri, we see that a teacher cannot simply isolate the importance of ecological integrity, but rather peace education is significant in achieving the understanding of the role and responsibilities of the global citizen (2005).
From being in Ghana and actually experiencing direct effects of the West on the African population, whether a result of colonialism or a result of our consumptive habits, I feel it very important to share with students, friends and family. There is something about going to a place like Elimina or the Liberian Refugee Camp that has an impact on you, unlike reading about it in a book. I suppose it is because that when you read about something disturbing, or watch it on television or the internet, you can close the book or turn it off. But when you see how people live without anything, smelling and tasting the desperation in the air, it becomes real. I think a global citizen should not only advocate that these issues be explored and acted on from home, but that others put themselves in the position to make it more real for them. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to have my future science students engage in a video conference with science students in a developing nation. I would like to think that both groups of students would be able to learn from conversing about different environmental problems and the proposed local solution for each.
The relevance of education was a point that was reinforced continuously for me while I was in Ghana. Much like Ansu-Kyeremeh proposed in his article, students need to be educated in a manner that is relevant to their economic and social situations. Ghana is a young country and is still sorting out what to do with its independence. Unfortunately, the world is progressing quickly and decisions need to be made in order to deal with the vast amount of waste being produced by the earth’s inhabitants. For this reason, contextualizing crucial issues while educating for global citizenship is important to be able to avoid cultural imperialism which, as I have seen, is clearly a hindrance to social development. Globalization has ushered in an era where people should not only benefit from resources that are available from afar, but also from the knowledge and solutions to some of the resulting problems.
References
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