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Speakers at a discussion on climate change on Wednesday in Accra, exposed the region's vulnerability to the danger and stressed the need for consensus actions to reduce the looming danger. They noted that Africa would be one of the most affected regions by climate change, as long as it remained one of the poorest in the world. The discussion, which is the first of four to be held by Clean Climate Heritage Ghana in partnership with Joy FM, was premised on identifying what Ghana should be doing in respect of providing solutions for climate change, focusing on vulnerable communities affected and prone to the effects of climate change with detailed profile and impact assessment among others. The discussion was structured around reports from the Copenhagen Summit, experts' reactions and comments to presentation and open discussion towards arriving at a consensus on objectives of the roundtable. The speakers unanimously agreed that droughts, floods and storms were likely to increase, not only in frequency, but also in intensity and that rainfall patterns were still changing and in coastal areas, sea level rise and rising temperatures would threaten coastal areas and ecosystems. Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, Deputy Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, said climate change scenarios for West Africa indicated that the climate variability currently being experienced was likely to increase and intensified. He said the prospective impacts on society and economies across the sub-region were likely to be huge, thereby negatively affecting all sectors and groups of people with women, the poor and marginalized being the most affected. The Deputy Minister said the role of the media in climate change sensitization was crucial and noted that the 2009 budget made provision for the training of about 20 journalists on the subject as well as develop a curriculum for journalism schools. Dr. Omane Boamah said that climate change would affect all facets of the economy including immigration services and insurance companies. He said that discussions and criticisms were necessary to shape the Copenhagen Accord and disagreed that the Copenhagen was a total failure. Dr Omane Boamah expressed the hope that Mexico would be a major improvement on Copenhagen adding that Ghana was preparing for national climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies as part of the national climate change policy development as well as draw up programmes and proposals that can tap into the green climate fund. He said these strategies were aimed at ensuring that climate change was integrated and mainstreamed into the country's national life as well as district development policies, plans and programmes. Mr William Agyeman-Bonsu of the Climate Change Unit of the Environmental Protection Agency said Ghana had a voice at the Copenhagen Summit in that all African countries were represented by the AU and that the accord could only be adopted unanimously. He said there were challenges as well as benefits from the meeting in Copenhagen noting that one of the benefits was that African countries could access funds directly and not from multinational agencies. Strategically, Mr. Agyeman-Bonsu said, Ghana needed to put efforts, programmes and appropriate legal systems together to access the Climate Fund to mitigate the effects on the country. Mr Musa Sallah of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, said climate change was no respecter of persons and that the financial institutions were no exception and that the Copenhagen Accord was a challenge for them. He said the country needed a proper mitigation action backed by relevant technological and capacity building. Mr. Sallah said that Ecobank would promote private sector participation to contribute its quota to mitigate the effects of climate change adding that there was the need to take a serious look at other sources of energy such as waste to energy. He called on the financial institution to work towards ensuring food security, ecotourism in the face of the current depletion of the forest among others. Mr Edward Nsenkyira, Chairman of the National Climate Change Committee, said the period 1960 to 2000 showed a progressive and discernible rise in temperatures. He mentioned areas of the economy affected as water resources, natural resource management and biodiversity, human health, food security, settlement and infrastructure, desertification and coastal erosion. Mr. Nsenkyira said he would critically examine existing development policies as well as institutional and technical capacity development, to reduce to the barest minimum the negative impact of climate change on Ghanaians through appropriate and desirable policy interventions. Dr. Audrey Gadzekpo, moderator of the discussion, said a recent research conducted showed that climate change was not high on the media agenda and called for more education and the demystification of climate change to make it meaningful to the ordinary Ghanaian.