Speaker: Benjamina Boamponsem, Kumasi, Ghana
How (and why) are you taking action on climate change solutions in, for, and with your community?
Benjamina Boamponsem: Hi, my name is Benjamin A Bons hailing from Ghana. I am a supply chain analyst. In fact, I have seen a lot of trees being cut down from the time I grew from my rural community. And this has really inspired me to bring a project named Green Horizons. So in green Horizons, what we do is we collaborate with local farmers to implement some sustainable climate species that we can plant in our agriculture plantations as well as we can create some ecofriendly enterprises. Here. We we want to plant some sustainable plants like bamboo where we involved in bamboo, furniture production. People will be able to get some local away from the organic use. I know that when we continue to educate people about this, this will not only increase or help in biodiversity or even sequestration of carbon but as well, this will also help people to be more um contributing to what you are doing. They will do well to help because as well as contributing to the economy or personal gains, people are going to get work to do from the local produce. This will not only help in reducing climate change, but it will also help the country to be a cons of its own natural resources and people will be able to contribute to the green economy that we are all pursuing. I believe this is what can help increase afforestation in our country. Thank you.
Who or what inspires/inspired you to care about climate change and climate solutions?
Benjamina Boamponsem: So, as I mentioned earlier, from age five, we used to stay in a local community called Kara in Ghana. And at our community, there were lots of time that we saw just come pick a lot of trees. I've seen people's homes being destroyed. Some people had to relocate from our community to a different place because a lot of trees were being cut down and that whenever it rained people, they had a lot of issues with a shame. Some of them, they lost many properties. So growing up, I realized that, well, why do we cut trees when we need them? Why do we have to spend money to bring trucks to come pick all the trees? And as long as I also learned that um plants help in absorbing carbon dioxide, why not it po oxygen and not absorbing carbon dioxide? So we just, I was inspired. So when I got to school in the university, I made sure I joined climate groups and it actually helped me to be more diplomatic. Yeah, I learned a lot from there and I believe that this has really inspired me that we can do more by educating a lot of people, especially the young people, people who are in schools right now, we can establish the levels about climate change and how deforestation is affecting it. I believe this can really help communities and even can hold some government can also help in some regulations that can be put down to help reduce the cutting of trees in the environment.
