On June 8 this year, the United Nations top environmental official, the Under-Secretary General/UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, called for a global ban on the use of plastic bags. Hurrah! But – how is Ghana responding to this call?
When earlier this year, the IMF announced a loan facility to cushion developing countries in the hard-hitting global credit crunch, there was clarity about Ghana’s response. Of course we did not hesitate to jump at the opportunity – over-enthusiastically.
Last March, the world media – Bloomberg, BBC and many others carried the news that the World Bank has promised to provide a US$1.2 billion of interest-free loans to Ghana over the next three years to bolster its economy. This single loan has been touted as the largest in our history – the loan that passeth all understanding. Fair enough! “Bring it on”, we might even say. “If we’re just ‘sitting our somewhere” and someone comes along to hand over sacks full of money to us, why should we say no?
Let’s juxtapose the IMF loan story with the UN call for a global ban on plastics. Since the UN made the call in early June, Ghana has not made any significant move to respond to the call.
Here is the crust of the plastic ban appeal. The report of the first study of its kind by the UN Environment Program (UNEP) entitled, Marine Litter: A Global Challenge, highlights the growing marine litter problem in seas around the world. At the lunch of the report, Steiner described marine litter as “symptomatic of a wider malaise: namely the wasteful use and persistent poor management of natural resources.”
The UNEP report cited plastics as one of the primary pollutants and greatest threats to marine life. Put bluntly, plastics are killing living creatures in the worlds’ oceans.
“Plastic – especially plastic bags and PET (i.e. plastic) bottles – is the most pervasive type of marine litter around the world, accounting for over 80 percent of all rubbish collected in several of the regional seas assessed. Plastic debris is accumulating in terrestrial and marine environments worldwide, slowly breaking down into tinier and tinier pieces that can be consumed by the smallest marine life at the base of the food web.”
The UN environmental boss concluded that, “Some of the litter, like thin film single use plastic bags which choke marine life, should be banned or phased-out rapidly everywhere – there is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere."
On the same day, to mark the first United Nations World Oceans Day, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his voice to the call. He asserted that human activities are taking a "terrible toll" on the world's oceans and seas.
"Vulnerable marine ecosystems, such as corals, and important fisheries are being damaged by over-exploitation, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, destructive fishing practices, invasive alien species and marine pollution, especially from land-based sources," he said.
Clearly, the world’s super body, the United Nations, is alarmed about plastics. And we must too. Research is being conducted worldwide about the plastic menace and the findings are frightening. For instance, a study of fulmar seabirds in the North Sea found that 95 percent of them had plastic in their stomachs.
Of course, we don’t need the United Nations or any research to tell us this. We know, as a country, that we must ban non-biodegradable plastics – the ones which have over-powered our entire landscape – from backyards to town centres, from markets to police stations, from cities to villages, and from rivers to the mighty Atlantic Ocean.
Some countries have taken the initiative to ban the non-biodegradable single-use plastics, the type we over-use and toss about mindlessly. Some African countries including South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya have taken varied bold initiatives. But Ghana is silent and periodically jokes about recycling plastics.
In the first week of August, a group of scientists set out on a journey from the US state of California to examine what is known as “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” The Patch is estimated to be about six times the size of Ghana, and growing. Here is how it formed. When plastics make it into the sea, they float and swim and dance with the sea currents. Later, after breaking down into tinier pieces, they band together in one area – and stay put. So the years of grand global plastic swimming has created a floating island in the Pacific Ocean.
Knowing comes from seeing, feeling, experiencing, awareness, familiarity, recognizing, understanding, comprehension, discerning, appreciating and grasping the essence of something. Plastic use and the resulting menace have reached that tipping point of insanity where we all know that it must be banned. So I’ll cry myself hoarse about the need to ban plastics in Ghana until I can cry no more. You must too.
Fact: Rivers and water bodies are forced to swallow down plastics. A walk by our beaches indicates that nature abhors filth. The sea, in its maturity and wisdom, vomits out plastics and lays down the heavy burden at the beaches.
I’m a ‘fishtarian’ (I eat fish and not meat.) Plastics are not meant to be consumed by any living being. But since plastics are the most common form of ocean litter (as well as litter in our rivers and water bodies), and are invariably eaten by fishes, what are the chances that the fish I eat and you eat and we eat is free of whatever chemicals are in the plastic debris eaten by fishes? I shudder to think and dwell on this matter at meal time.
So when will Ghana respond to the call of the UN for a global plastic ban? Here is my guess; in fact, my conviction. Plastics is a business. Big business! Big money! So those who make money from plastics would lobby against a ban.
How I wish I could be a fly on the walls of the Castle, at the very seat of government and in high-place ministerial offices and meetings to eavesdrop on the sheer magnitude of lobbying that goes on to thwart any dreams of banning plastics! An expressed, unbending political will of government to do otherwise to save our land and waters from plastics will not hurt.
We must have this national conversation on the way forward instead of burying our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. Living in denial about plastics will not eradicate the menace. It will only magnify the destructions of plastics and complicate the solution.
My fascination heightens when I see plastics fly around like birds. They are the flying objects of our 52 year old civilization. The difference is that plastics tend to land more often than birds. They take off suddenly on any little push by the wind, hop around for a little while and then make landing anywhere – on streets, in gutters, rivers, on roof tops, and on electrical or telephone wires. They don’t care where they land because they are helpless without the wind.
Remember, the next time you handle plastics (usually, mindlessly) that all the plastic you over-use and toss about might last forever, long long after you’ve exited (escaped?) this earth’s! You, me, we all are contributing to this menace. It is your plastics, my plastics, our plastics that fly around and choke gutters, water-ways, rivers, farmlands and litter the streets, hang on trees and electrical wires.
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