Ghana requires between $9.3 and $15.5 billion of investments to implement its measures for the updated Nationally-Determined Contributions (NDC) towards the global response to climate for a 10-year period from 2020 to 2030.

NDCs are self-determined co-ordinated climate change mitigation and adaptation actions required of parties of the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change adopted in 2015.

The Minister of Environment, Science and Technology and Innovation, Dr Kwaku Afriyie , who disclosed this yesterday, said of the revised figure, $ 3.9 billion was required to implement 16 unconditional programmes of actions till 2030.

He said at a pre-COP 26 press conference in Accra that the remaining $5.4 billion for 31 conditional programmes of actions would be mobilised from the public, international and private sector sources and carbon markets.

“Ghana would need an additional three million biennially to support coordinated actions and the regular international reporting of the NDCs,” he said.

The UK is set to host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, from October 31 to November 12, which seeks to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Ghana is participating in the event which would bring together more than 30,000 delegates and 125 world leaders to deliberate on efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees on the theme ‘Keeping 1.5 alive’.

Dr. Afriyie said the updated NDCs covered19 policy areas and translated into 47 mitigation and adaptation programmes of action, including 34 migration programmes of action which were envisaged to generate absolute greenhouse emissions reduction.

The priority areas, he said, included building resilience to protect vulnerable communities and ecosystems, advancing climate responsive food production systems; lowering deforestation and landscape restoration, scaling up renewable energy and sustainable energy transition, and promoting clean electricity.

He said Ghana had submitted an interim NDCs to the UNFCCC and was awaiting the updated NDCS to undergo high-level political approval,adding that the document affirmed the country’s resolve to address potential impacts on sustainable development.

For the first time, Dr. Afriyie said, Ghana had acquired a pavilion and an office space at the Conference to be able to properly showcase the country’s climate change efforts to the world.

The Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Dr Henry Kokofu, said the Agency would continue to provide technical leadership on climate change, noting that the phenomenon would be another pandemic if the international community failed to act fast.

“It is time the international community put its best foot forward to make climate change count. COP26 is a fine opportunity to deliver hope”, he said.

The chargé d’ Affaires at the British High Commission to Ghana, Beth Cadman, said the UK would continues to work with Ghana after COP26 to implement Ghana’s NDCs, and to collaborate to influence stakeholders and some countries, to meet their obligations.