An Examination Of The Policy Incoherence In Enhancing Sustainable Development And Action On Climate Change In Post-War Sierra Leone

The concepts of sustainable development (SD) and climate change (CC) havepermeated mainstream thinking over the past two decades, and they apparentlybecame widely-held social and political goals after the1992Earth Summit and2002World Summit on Sustainable Development. It has now become clear that eventhough achieving sustainable development is of prime importance, yet there iscommon acceptance that development programs should not only meet human needs,but must at the same time preserve the ecosystems by integrating the followingdimensions: economic, ecological and human/social. This means that the essence ofsustainable development is meeting fundamental human needs in ways that preservethe life support system of the planet i.e. the environment. The primary trend in thisprocess should therefore be reconciling real and perceived conflicts between theeconomy and the environment on one hand, and between the present and the future onthe other, and this should apply both in policy and practice. The foregoing discussimplicitly points to the fact that synergies exist between climate change andsustainable development, societies are vulnerable to CC impact, CC is basicallyattributable to human activities (e.g. industrialization, deforestation etc), and that thereis need to checkmate it if development is to be sustained especially in the long run.For example, it should be noted that some adaptation and mitigation measures (e.g.use of renewable energy etc) aimed at forestalling climate change do not only addressits impact, but can also engender economic growth. Because of this synergy therefore,it is necessary that attempts to promote sustainable development be integrated withefforts aimed at curbing climate change, because doing so will guaranty sustaineddevelopment.In Sierra Leone however, the practice has been to approach sustainabledevelopment and climate change as two separate entities, as reflected in its post-wardevelopment drive. In a reconstruction blue-print labeled;“The Agenda for Change”government religiously stipulated its development aspiration along the practice ofenticing foreign direct investments (FDIs) into sectors whose activities are believed tohave huge potentials of exacerbating climate change in the country e.g. mining andagribusiness. By pursuing this relatively exclusive investor driven policy therefore,government seems to not only favorably segregate economic development at theexpense of other important policy issues like climate change, but the practice also undermines environmental sustainability and long-term development. This scenarioclearly depicts a very complex situation, and one that points to the fact of theexistence of policy incoherence within the SD and CC policy handling by thegovernment, and which if not quickly addressed, will have the capacity to furtherexpose the country to the vagaries of climate change and its attendant calamities. Inview of the foregoing, this study examined the policy discrepancy exhibited by theGovernment of Sierra Leone (GoSL) in handling these very sensitive issues, i.e.sustainable development and climate change. The study therefore advanced the casethat climate change and sustainable development complements each other; thusseparating them will undermine the desired effect of achieving positive results fromboth, as such it advocates for the integration of SD and CC issues.