The Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Samuel Nii Ardey Codjoe, has called for a well-integrated risk management approach to address Ghana’s perennial flooding problem.
The geographer and soil scientist said the approach should cater to safety awareness, evacuation, and psychological needs of victims.
The Pro-Vice-Chancellor, who is in charge of the university’s research, innovation, and development, said the current structure of institutions involved in flood management, from the national to district level, was quite complex and needed to be knit together to work seamlessly.
The distinguished professor of the university’s population studies at the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) was delivering his inaugural lecture as a full professor last Thursday.
The lecture was on the topic: Reading the skies and healing the land: Climate, indigenous knowledge, and health.
It attracted former vice-chancellors, politicians, members of the university community, students, and friends of the professor.
Prof. Codjoe said the prediction that Africa was likely to experience more flooding in the coming years called for Ghana’s institutions to work closely with local authorities in a coordinated fashion to deal with the situation head-on.
He said currently, the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) appeared to have been overwhelmed by the situation, and that called for a new approach in tackling it.
The population studies professor added that the causes of the yearly flooding were many and complex, including residents building in environmentally sensitive areas and dumping refuse in gutters.
The lecturer established that climate change was a major environmental and health challenge affecting livelihoods, food security, and well-being.
The lecture examined links between climate change, indigenous knowledge, disease patterns, and health care in Ghana.
The lecturer argued that effective adaptation required integrating scientific evidence with local knowledge to strengthen climate monitoring, disease prevention, and a resilient health system.
“Knowledge does not reside in laboratories and universities alone. It’s not the prerogative of education holders,” Prof. Codjoe postulated.
He posited that long before science, traditional people were able to read the weather and could tell the future through nature, including the use of avian species—birds.
That, according to him, called for collaboration between science and traditional rulers to find a permanent solution to the challenge.
Dealing more with the effect of climate change, a major contributor to flooding, the scholar said the shift from the use of terracotta or ceramic roofing to colour-coated aluzinc was a cause of the increasing heat in rooms and indoors.
Prof. Codjoe questioned the continued use of red roofing sheets instead of white or light-coloured roofs, which did not attract heat.
The professor said a lot of Ghanaian rooms were sealed with no air conditioning and proper ventilation avenues, contributing to intense heat in rooms.
He advised the planting of more trees and greens in homes to reduce the “baking heat” and provide shelter to ease the heat condition in homes.
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