

Ghana is a founding partner of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and the first country in the world to include short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) and other air pollutants into their fourth official National Greenhouse Gas Inventory submitted to the UNFCCC.
Since joining in 2012, the country has been committed to aggressive action on SLCPs, particularly through a series of ambitious national action plans. Ghana committed to unconditionally lower greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent by 2030 and voluntarily pledged an additional 30 percent reduction if the country receives external funding to cover the full cost of implementing mitigation action.
Ghana’s national plans show their recognition of the strategic power of acting on pollution and climate together by focusing not just on carbon reductions but also on SLCPs. In 2018, Ghana launched its National Action Plan to Mitigate SLCPs which identifies 16 mitigation measures across seven sectors. In 2013, Ghana launched the “Climate Ambitious report Programme” to monitor and report on greenhouse gases. This program resulted in the Ministry of Finance starting to track climate support, develop a climate finance tracking tool, and establish an online climate data hub for reporting. The 2013 National Climate Change Policy included methane reduction strategies including landfill diversion and recycling to reduce the amount of solid and liquid waste in urban areas and to generate energy. In 2016, the country also announced its Low Carbon Development Strategy to generate investment for mitigation opportunities.
Ghana is an enthusiastic leader across a variety of the Coalition’s initiatives, including the Global Methane Initiative (GMI) of which Ghana is a steering committee member. The country has representatives on the biogas, agriculture, and waste technical groups under the biogas sector as well as the committee on oil and gas systems.
In 2018, Ghana’s capital city of Accra became the first African city to join CCAC’s Breathelife campaign. "Cities are becoming more important in the geopolitical space. Someone has to provide leadership. I am willing to do so,” said Mayor Mohammed Adjei Sowah of the decision. “In our part of the world air pollution is not prioritized as a health concern, even in the way we cook. But the statistics are so staggering that we have to wake people up to take action. We have to talk about it loudly so that it becomes part of our discourse in the urban political space.”
Read below for more highlights of Ghana’s work.
International Activity
National Climate Plans
Transport
In 2019, a study was conducted on the infrastructural needs and market perception of consumers towards implementation of electric mobility in Ghana.
In 2020, the Ministry of Transport is developing the Accra city electric bus project, which is seeking funding from the Green Climate Fund.
Air Quality
In 2019, the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency collaborated with Environment 360, to implement open burning programme at James Town catchment Area Using Low Cost Sensors.
Household energy
Energy efficiency and cooling
In 2019, Ghana became the 79th country to ratify the Kigali Amendment to pave the way for the implementation of a national programme to gradually phase out HFCs by introducing an alternative technology to HFCs with the support of the private sector.
Energy
Waste
Presentation materials and the recording of the webinar "Advancing National SLCP Planning and Implementation in West African States" held on 6 May 2022.
This event brought together...
CCAC supported historical and current spatial and temporal patterns of open burning in Ghana with support of the International Cryosphere and Climate Initiative (ICCI) and researchers from Miami...
This webinar will focus on options for countries to incorporate targets, policies, and actions on short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) into their updated Nationally Determined Contributions (...
The objective of the Ghana Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) is to analyze critical environmental and natural resources issues threatening sustainable economic growth and propose policy actions...
Thanks in large part to the growing number of integrated assessments, tools and good examples, international interest in applying integrated co-governance approaches to solve connected climate,...
This guidance document provides a practical framework that can be used to identify, prioritise and include mitigation measures that can increase a country’s climate change mitigation ambition...
Ghana submitted its second Biennial Update Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in October 2018. Following the national planning support of the CCAC and for the...
Ghana's action plan to mitigate short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) culminated from a multi-sector consultative process between 2016 and 2018. The process led to the identification and...
In support of the implementation of the WHO guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion (2014), WHO developed the Household Energy Assessment Rapid Tool (HEART) to identify...
EPA Ghana developed this comprehensive Air Quality Management Plan (AQMP) for the GAMA and Greater Accra Region as the next step in addressing these problems. This plan complements the National...
These presentations were used during the event, "The Pathway to the Paris Targets Matters", held during the UNFCCC forty-eighth sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 48)....
SNAP Initiativie Factsheet for Ghana
An emissions model for HFCs in Ghana based on the information and materials generated in an earlier country review of HFC consumption supported by the CCAC.