On the 27th of June 2024, Mr. Charles Abani (UN Resident Coordinator, Ghana), headlined UNU INRA’s annual Kwapong Lecture at University of Ghana’s Cedi Conference Centre with UNU’s Rector, board members, government and private sector representatives, media and academia from sustainability and climate university departments in attendance.
For this year’s lecture, Mr. Abani spoke on the theme :Green wins: fostering a better dialogue towards sustainable, inclusive natural resource governance.” He first laid the foundation of his insightful speech by highlighting that the world is at a critical juncture facing “a triple planetary crisis which involves: climate change, biodiversity loss and waste.” He added that, the interconnectedness of these issues means they exacerbate one another and need critical attention to ensure the Africa’s sustainable development.
As a crucial element of climate change, Mr. Abani pointed out that “energy is at the heart of Africa’s development aspirations and environmental challenges thus, it must be accessible, affordable, cleaner and greener.” He called out the need to reframe the climate and energy conversations and drive new narratives that include the voices of those often marginalised the climate dialogue and action, as the dominant narratives ( often from the global North), have shaped the discourse on sustainability especially, in the natural resource governance space.
Aside highlighting the challenges in Africa’s NRM sector, Mr. Abani provided a glimpse of hope for the continent, by proposing important considerations such as adopting integrated approaches that consider macro-economic, political and sectoral impacts. He pointed out that, there is a need for sustainable extraction(of natural resources) approaches’ that deliver equitable value as well as finding context specific solutions to environmental challenges. He also added that “there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, thus we need a suite of responses” to our varied problems. Collaboration, coordination, while recognising shared responsibilities are other major elements of Mr. Abani’s proposed inclusive and sustainable NRM strategies.
By concluding that Africa must adopt a win-win approach while enforcing sustainable interdependence and equitable approaches, Mr. Abani joins the list of prominent thought leaders whose independent thoughts, challenging of conventional wisdom, provision of new narratives and solutions, have made INRA’s Kwapong annual lecture, insightful, thought provoking and a call to action for a sustainable, Africa.
Previous Kwapong lectures speakers’ include: Professor Marwala, Rector of the United Nations University, Dr. Frannie Leautier, former Vice President of the African Development Bank, Dr. Youba Sokona, former Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and current UNU INRA board member, Professor Christopher Gordon, University of Ghana.
