Suchergebnisse

The desire to combat the negative externalities of climate change and its variability has gained a lot of ground over the last few decades. This has resulted in the development of several approaches among which is the UI GreenMetric university ranking developed in 2010. In light of this, this article seeks to examine the performance of African higher education institutions on the ranking table and the impact they have had on their respective countries. To achieve this, this article compared performance scored between participating universities, carbon dioxide (CO2) emission trends, and renewable energy consumption trends. The findings paint a picture of poor performance across each of the categories measured under the UI GreenMetric ranking. However, there was some marginal decline in CO2 emissions as well as an increase in renewable energy consumption for some participating countries. The findings reveal that participation of African universities in the ranking has been very low. Institutionalizing green campus initiatives by African governments to make it a must for a higher education institution to adopt such strategies was recommended. The study also recommends an increase in support for research in the area of green technologies, methods, and procedures in Africa so as to create enough awareness and education on the topic. © 2020 WIT

Green economy development strategies and the transition from conventional economic development models to green economy has become necessary due to the negative impact of conventional economic development models on the local and global environment. Despite Ghana's effort to transition to green economy that is made evident by the implementation of a number of green economy related policies and strategies, the country is yet to record any significant achievement in that regard. This study therefore used the SWOT analytical tool to access the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats of Ghana's green economy transformation efforts. The results revealed that the country's geographical location, environmental policies, potential for green energy mix, a young and dynamic population, the country's effort to reduce poverty levels and illiteracy rates are the main strengths. However, factors such as weak institutions, inadequate funding for green technologies innovations, inadequate long term policies for green strategies and inadequate political will are some key weaknesses. The study further found commercial interests in driving the development and transfer of green technology, cross-border collaborations and global attention to climate change, local and international support for green economy, awareness and understanding of environmental protection as some of the major opportunities. Inadequate commitment to support technology development and transfer, cost of green technologies, increasing threat of climate change and corruption were identified as threats to Ghana's effort to green its economy. In conclusion, it is imperative that policy makers develop strategies that can help take advantage of the strengths and opportunities while serving as solutions to the weakness and threats. Among other things, it is important for policy makers to prioritize science and technology education to support green economy development. © 2021

The exponential increase in the population of Ghana and the need to meet the population's food security needs while creating job opportunities have necessitated the implementation of the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative by the Government of Ghana (GoG). Using the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analytical tool, we SWOT of the PFJ initiative. We further complemented the study with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) tool to rank the various criteria (factors) identified under the SWOT analysis. The study identified favorable environmental conditions as the highest strength, which recorded 59.3%, followed by agricultural lands availability (21.8%). Inadequate of financial services was identified as the highest weakness (55.8%), followed by over-reliance on climatic conditions (25.9%). High export potential relative to agricultural products in the country was identified as the highest opportunity, which recorded a weight of 50.3%. The One District One Factory (1D1F) initiative came up as the second highest opportunity. Negative ramification of climate change was identified as the main threat to Ghana's agricultural sector (57.9%), followed by the importation of basic food products (25%). © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. ; The paper is based on research carried out with the financial support of the grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), project number 20-011-00087 (Institutional factors and forms of rural development).

Despite the enormous renewable energy (RE) resources available in Ghana, the country has not seen much development and investments in the sector. Therefore, the government has committed to increasing the share of RE in the country's electricity generation mix to some 10% by 2030. However, this cannot be achieved without the Ghanaian people's support since the RE sector is capital intensive and requires both public and private sector participation. This study was conducted to evaluate RE's social acceptance among Ghanaian people using the ordered logit regression model. A total of 999 valid questionnaires out of 1020 distributed questionnaires were considered for the study. The five-point Likert scale was employed to rank their willingness to accept (WTA) RE. From the results, it was observed that there is a general sense of acceptance of renewable energy among Ghanaians. However, the level of acceptance varies from one respondent to another. The study observed that a majority of the respondents (i.e., approximately 45.65%) agree to their WTA renewable energy, while 36.04% strongly agree. The results also indicate that while 6.21% and 0.3% disagree and strongly disagree, 11.81% of the respondents were indifferent regarding their willingness to accept renewable energy development and utilization in Ghana. © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. ; The authors would like to acknowledge Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin for the valued financial support for this study. We also thank all the survey enumerators and respondents who spent their precious time to collate the results to help us realize our objectives.