The Ghana National Plastic Action Partnership (NPAP) is celebrating two years of supporting the transition to a circular economy for plastics in Ghana.
The NPAP has facilitated the multistakeholder design of a comprehensive national framework and enabling tools to combat plastic pollution sustainably in Ghana.
Convene. Generate Insight. Make Impact.
Since its inauguration by President Nana Akuffo-Addo in October 2019, the 120-member national partnership has convened a platform where stakeholders from multiple sectors – public, private (formal and informal), development partners, civil society and academia – meet to engage in critical conversations that drive collective action towards fostering a circular economy for plastics by tackling plastic waste pollution in Ghana.
The NPAP’s search for solutions focuses on six impact areas: boosting innovation, promoting inclusivity, informing policy, unlocking financing, transforming behaviour, and harmonising metrics. These impact areas are connected components that cut across the plastic value chain throughout the NPAP setup and delivery process.
To ensure that its insights and recommendations towards addressing plastic pollution are realistic, targeted and effective, the platform commissioned two studies in 2020. The first was a National Baseline Analysis, which helped identify current and projected flows of municipal solid plastic waste and estimated plastic waste leakage into the environment, particularly water bodies.
This analysis revealed the potential impact of interventions (or a combination of interventions) that reduce plastic leakage into land and water environments and helped estimate the operating and capital costs required to reduce leakage.
For the second study, the NPAP, with support from Global Affairs Canada (GAC), conducted a gender analysis to understand the gender-related roles, barriers, and impacts across the plastics value chain, enhancing gender inclusion and women’s empowerment in Ghana. The findings from this study were discussed at a workshop in
July 2021, during which participating stakeholders brainstormed how institutions can actively adopt recommendations from the study into their operations.
Roadmaps to sustainably combatting plastic pollution
The National Action Roadmap recently completed by the Ghana NPAP is a locally designed and stakeholder-aligned blueprint for addressing Ghana’s plastic waste and pollution. The roadmap, due to be launched in
December 2021, includes actions and milestones for solving the issues identified in the baseline assessment, which focuses on five intervention areas: reduce and substitute, redesign plastics for recycling, scale-up collection, increase recycling, and build and expand safe disposal capacity.
The Action Roadmap will be complemented by a Financing Roadmap, which outlines recommendations for creating an enabling financing environment that incentivizes and de-risks investments to scale the plastics value chain and help Ghana transition into a circular economy. The Financing Roadmap is planned to be launched in January 2022.
Task Forces to further widen stakeholder involvement and drive implementation on the ground
The NPAP will launch six Task Forces to articulate modalities for implementing the recommendations of the National Action Roadmap, which relate to the six impact areas: Innovation, Inclusivity, Behaviour, Financing, Policy and Metrics.
The Financing Task Force, launched in September 2021, has convened local and external financing organisations and government agencies to support the development of the Financing Roadmap. The
NPAP also launched the Inclusion Task Force in September 2021 to mainstream gender equity and inclusivity into the solutions being designed to tackle plastic pollution.
With the support and action of each stakeholder, including individuals, Ghana is on its way to delivering the zero-plastic pollution target by 2040.
About Ghana NPAP
The Ghana National Plastic Action Partnership (NPAP), established in 2019, is an initiative of the World
Economic Forum in partnership with the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation in Ghana (MESTI).
The Ghana NPAP is responsible for driving the implementation of national action plans to combat plastic pollution. Its priorities include: incentivising changes in material use; building capacity in waste management and recycling; enabling innovation and technology transfer; raising awareness and changing behaviours to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics; promoting gender equality and meaningful work; and ensuring transparent governance and accountability in the transition to a circular plastics economy.
Source: Ghana News
