Dr Barnabas Amisigo, a research scientist at Water Research Institute of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has called on African governments to develop the political will to adopt new policies to meet the challenges of climate change on the continent. He observed that due to lack of proper coordination between researchers and policy makers in Africa, reports from researchers were not being recognized or utilised but relied mostly on information on issues based on the developed world at the expense of developing countries. Dr Amisigo made the call when presenting a paper on “Climate Change” at a two-day conference on climate, environment and human health at Cape Coast. It was under the theme “The Challenges of Climatic and Environmental Changes and their Implication for Human health”. The conference attended by journalists, students, researchers and NGOs, is being organized by Centre for Environmental Impact Analysis (CEIA) in collaboration with the United Nations University Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA). It is to assess the potential health effects of climate variability and environmental changes, with the goal of identifying vulnerable population and sub-groups and interventions that could be implemented to reduce the current and future burden of disease. Dr Amisigo expressed concern about the inadequate information on climate change particularly, global warming, to policy makers in Africa that did not augur well for the socio-economic development of the continent and stressed the need to link researchers with policy makers. He stressed the need for researchers in Africa, particularly Ghana, to have a lobbying group that could coordinate their activities with policy makers and advocated the establishment of such a group in the country. Dr Amisigo called for the involvement of “many and varied stakeholders” in an effective and sustained education on mainstream climate change issues into national development programmes. He pointed out that global warming was actually happening and advised African leaders to come out with pragmatic policies and programmes to adequately meet the challenges which had a devastating effect on human health. Dr Amisigo noted that Africa was one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change variability, which was already affecting parts of the continent in the form of floods, storms, and in some cases droughts. Mr Samuel Obiri, Executive Director of CEIA said the issue of climate change was a reality and all hands must be on deck to address the situation. He called on scientists and researchers to write more about the effects of climate change in Africa and formulate policies that would help educate the public on the causes and effects of climate change. Source: GNA