The Regional Centre of Excellence for Water and Environmental Sanitation Centre, Kumasi (RWESCK) in collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and other partners have organised the ALL4WASH Summer School on the theme: Unlocking the Opportunities of Blue-Circular Economy for Sustainable Communities of the Future.
The ALL4WASH Summer School was held from the 13th to 22nd July 2022. It was funded by the Norwegian partnership programme for Global Academic Cooperation (NORPAT) with participants from Norway and five African countries; Mali, South Africa, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.
Director of the Centre and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering, Professor Sampson Oduro-Kwarteng, in a brief presentation on the Centre said the KNUST established RWESCK to build high quality resource capacity in Ghana and the West African sub-region to address the development challenges highlighted in the Africa Water Vision 2025 and Sustainable Development Goals.
He revealed that the Centre is being hosted by the Department of Civil Engineering which runs Masters and PhD programmes and offer scholarships to some students.
The Summer School sought to help drive the blue-circular communities globally to yield positive results for the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector with the development of viable solutions.
In her keynote address, the Former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR), Professor (Mrs.) Esi Awuah, said the circular economy looks at the waste and the end product and how it could be harnessed to useful and cost-effective ways. However, the blue economy goes beyond that in addition to making the system efficient and cost effective, it also looks at introducing technologies that protects the environment and reduces chemicals in product development. The blue-circular economy focusses on enterprises, creating viable sustainable businesses by recycling of resources for sustainable development.
Professor (Mrs.) Awuah said resources should not be wasted and government should come up with appropriate policies, regulation, enforcement and monitor ways of waste disposal through regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“If you produce bottled water, you should be able to tell EPA how you will collect the waste bottles and recycle them and not just pollute the environment with the plastic bottles while making your profit. We need to plan in order not to run into problems when we run out of resources” she added.
Professor (Mrs.) Esi Awuah said China has introduced the blue-circular economy in its schools to the extent that basic school children are taught that nothing goes waste, but it is useful and not to be thrown away. She therefore called on African leaders to consider introducing the blue-circular economy in schools and to children.
She further encouraged sustainability in agriculture where compost is given back to farmers for food production.
The NORPAT Project Lead, Professor Razak Seidu, explained that the NORPAT project, ALL4WASH, is supported by the Norwegian government under its international cooperation programmes aimed at strengthening capacity in WASH in both the global north and global south.
Professor Seidu stated that globally we are facing significant challenges within the Water and Sanitation sector which have transnational and trans-boundary impact and calls for more international cooperation to address the challenges in a good way. He continued that more importantly there is the need to train a new generation of water and environmental engineers in the water and sanitation sector that have a deeper understanding and knowledge of the blue-circular economy to work to address the challenges for sustainable development.