Professor Chris Gordon, a Senior Research Fellow, has called for collaborations among researchers in the country’s universities to give more weight to their findings.
He said all these years, researchers have been working on their own, but the time has come to bring all of them together to bring socio-economic impact to the people.
“Working separately is making life more difficult for ourselves,” Prof Gordon said this at a day’s workshop on “Building Capacity to Crosslink Coastal Pollution with Climate Change (BC5)” project.
The BC5 project is a strategic north-south-south collaboration between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the University of Ghana (UG), and affiliated collaboration with the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
BC5 as part of its project objectives seeks to promote networks, citizen science, Ocean Literacy and Stewardship through collaborations on multi-stakeholder platforms to promote land-based actions on the marine environment for sustainable resource utilization.
It also seeks to address the thematic area “Climate Change and Natural Resources” under NORHED II, as well as building knowledge on sustainable management of marine coastal ecosystems and resources, strengthening and improving existing regional coastal research.
Prof Gordon, also a former Director of the Institute of Environment and Sanitation Studies (IESS) of the University of Ghana said the IESS would lead the research project, which activities would be parallel and intertwined with capacity enhancement in education through the establishment of field and experimental training and curriculum development on the combined impact of coastal contamination and climate change ecosystems in Ghana and Tanzania.
In Ghana the research will be conducted in Ga Mashie in the Greater Accra, Ankobrah river to ascertain how both legal and illegal mining is contaminating the river, and Songor and Keta Ramser sites, which will look at erosion and mangrove.
He said the project focused on defining and implementing successful programmes to enhance local capacity in education, research, and management of coastal resources.
BC5’s project implementation has fundamental research-based education activities, bringing current problems of great societal importance as part of the research and education curriculum, challenging students to gain knowledge and developing approaches that will result in real impact activities.
Prof Gordon said:” The combined impacts of pollution and climatic stressors on the environment and biodiversity might be completely different regionally and little knowledge about this prevents effective legislation and policy-making for resilience and sustainability.
“BC5 addresses the gap between research needs and practice, education and the management of coastal resources by defining a novel education, research and management model for the area, finding ways of protecting the coastal resources under the impact of human-made contaminants and climatic stressors.”
In all, eleven PhD and 33 Masters students from the collaborating universities are taking part in the project.