Climate experts, government officials, and agricultural stakeholders have gathered in Accra for a three-day stakeholder engagement workshop focused on strengthening inclusive climate adaptation tracking and reporting within Ghana's agriculture sector.

Organised by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, the African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES), and the University of Cape Town, in collaboration with Ghana's Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the event aims to build capacity and align national reporting mechanisms with global standards.

The initiative comes as changing weather patterns, droughts, and rising temperatures continue to pose severe threats to Ghana's rainfed, smallholder-dominated agriculture sector.

Delivering the keynote remarks, Chair of the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN), Nana Dr. Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, emphasised that monitoring adaptation efforts must move beyond procedural paperwork to deliver concrete benefits for vulnerable communities.

"This is not only about reporting. It is about ensuring that our adaptation efforts are reaching the people who need them most and delivering results we can see, measure, and build upon," Dr. Amoah stated.

He highlighted that as Ghana scales up resilience initiatives such as promoting climate-resilient crops, early warning systems, and expanding irrigation, governments must evaluate the actual difference these projects make in farmers' lives.

"As governments, therefore, it is no longer sufficient to demonstrate that adaptation activities are being implemented," Dr. Amoah noted. "We must also be able to show whether those interventions are reducing vulnerability, strengthening resilience and reaching the people and communities that need them most." He added that "as we scale up adaptation action, our focus must increasingly shift from what we are doing to the difference those interventions are making."

Embedding Social Equity in Climate Data

A central theme of the workshop is integrating Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) considerations directly into national reporting templates to reflect the experiences of women, youth, and persons with disabilities. Warning against surface-level metrics, Dr. Amoah cautioned that traditional tracking risks overlooking marginalized groups.

"If our monitoring systems do not capture these differences, our reports may show progress while important groups remain behind," he stressed.

Reflecting on broader Pan-African priorities and international developments—such as the Belém Adaptation Indicators (BAI) adopted at COP30—the AGN Chair advocated for connecting global decision-making directly to local agricultural realities.

"The negotiating room and the farmer's field cannot exist as two separate worlds," Dr. Amoah asserted.

He pointed out that "good reporting begins long before the report is written," requiring clear institutional roles, established baselines, and structured data flows from district levels to national bodies.

As Ghana prepares its Second Biennial Transparency Report (BTR2) under the UNFCCC Enhanced Transparency Framework following its BTR1 submission in December 2024, the workshop serves as a technical foundation to map data producers, validators, and key indicators across subsectors.

Concluding his address, Dr. Amoah encouraged participants to look beyond meeting international reporting cycles to build a permanent, evidence-backed information system that drives climate finance and national policy.

"If we get this right, we will strengthen not only our reporting but also the link between evidence, policy, finance and real action on the ground," he concluded.