Former Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has proposed personal criminal liability for public officials who approve development projects in protected wetlands, watercourses, drainage channels and forest reserves.

He argued that Ghana’s current system shields individual officials from accountability because unlawful or harmful permits are treated as decisions made by institutions.

“The Assembly cannot go to prison. The person who signed can,” he said.

Prof. Frimpong-Boateng made the proposal while delivering the keynote address at the Fourth Annual Colloquium of the Department of Political Science Education at the University of Education, Winneba, on Wednesday, September 2, 2026.

The colloquium was held under the theme, “Politics, the Environment, and Our Future: Ghana at Crossroads?”

According to the former minister, liability for granting permits in protected areas should remain enforceable even after the responsible official has left office, just as liability for fraud does.

“An officer who signs a development permit for a gazetted wetland, a watercourse, a drainage reserve or a forest reserve should commit a personal offence, not an institutional one,” he stated.

Prof Frimpong-Boateng said weak accountability in land-use planning had contributed to the loss of wetlands, the obstruction of natural waterways and recurring floods, particularly in Greater Accra.

He noted that all nine drainage basins in the region had been narrowed, encroached upon or converted for development, while parts of the Korle Lagoon and the Densu Delta had also been taken over by projects.

“We call the result a flood. Rain is not a flood. Rain becomes a flood when the water has nowhere to go, and the water has nowhere to go because somebody signed for the place where it used to go,” he said.

He cited the June 3, 2015, flood and fire disaster in Accra, which killed more than 150 people, as an example of the deadly consequences of failures in planning and permitting.

“We remember it as a disaster. It was a permit,” he said, adding that no individual was prosecuted because the responsibility was attributed to institutions.

The former minister also called for forest reserves and water bodies to be placed completely outside the mining licensing system, with no ministerial discretion or exemptions.

He said attaching names and personal responsibility to permit decisions would deter officials from authorising developments that endanger lives and undermine Ghana’s environmental security.