Written in the Language of Dead Whales

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

There are two different kinds of people you are likely to encounter in most ecological dialogues. Those who believe the catastrophes happening to the planet are naturally designed and those who know human activities are largely to be blamed. The first group retreats to the walls of denial, the latter is found within the spheres of activism.

When the Ghana Youth Environmental Movement (GYEM) launched its price for pollution campaign earlier this year and demanded that those who pollute the environment pay for that pollution, an unusual creature was to be the mascot for the campaign—a whale. During the few media encounters, the Movement explained that its research team suspected a strong linkage between the death of whales within the past 2 years and the oil exploration going on at the Western coast of Ghana. Government and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) thought otherwise.

The laughing blue whale, locally named ‘KwaBonsu’ has walked on the streets, hugged people, met government officials, and delivered a simple powerful campaign message—each dead whale carries a strong warning! Just like the melting ice caps in the Arctic, the sum total of what is happening in our waters is written in the language of dead whales.

Several months on, a total of 16 whales have washed ashore in area where oil exploration takes place, and the EPA is still in denial. Protecting the environment shouldn't have been political but denying out rightly the possible and likely cause of something without any evidence to show the actual otherwise cause takes us back into the streets of ritual politics. It renders any public interest in the issue laughingly insignificant.

Photo credit: e.tv Ghana

Campaigners are passion driven and genuinely interested in the impacts dead whales are likely to have on our food chain, so the idea that ‘we have heard your concerns so go home’ is a hard slap on the face. When problems of the environment are brought forward for discussions in this country, the government postpones solutions and the media switches on daily political debates. What happened to hope?

Our profit-driven economic system shuts our eyes to the one important factor that makes economics meaningful—the ecosystem. What are the impacts of this pollution on the communities along the coast and to what extent are they detected and mitigated? What is happening to our fishes down the sea and what kind of food do our fishermen bring to our table? What is the value of the ecosystem services unpaid for and yet been destroyed with impunity? What is the cost of this pollution to public health? The answers are written in the language of the dead whales.