Peter Ansah: Three lessons from Ghana’s inaugural Climate x Culture Summit

On Thursday, 22 October, at the Accra A.I. Community Centre, at the Google Office, musicians, festival directors, climate scientists, bankers, journalists and policy officials gathered for the first Climate x Culture Summit. Professionals and practitioners from two worlds that rarely share a stage were in the same room. The question was simple: can entertainment and cultural experiences be designed and executed more sustainably? It was a full day of panels and keynotes covering creativity, festivals, financing and storytelling. Leading the conversation were people who have built the industry’s biggest experiences and its most innovative alternatives. Culture entrepreneur and founder of the Rave Group was Afro Nation Ghana’s executive producer when the international Afrobeats festival first touched Ghana’s shores in 2019. His teams at The Rave Group and Republic of Amusement have turned waste dumps into festival sites, planned raves in nature, and routinely set aside funds for innovative waste management solutions during festivals. Joseph Zotoo is a senior business development and research lead at The OR Foundation, a Ghana-based organisation working on the problem of used-clothing waste. It was clear from the start of the Climate X Culture summit. This was not going to be a talking shop but a day of celebration of impact and experience sharing. Three lessons stood out. 1. Culture cannot be an afterthought of climate action “What if the next big climate solution is in a song, on a stage, in a story or in the way we produce the events we love?” That’s how Prisilla Adomaah Nsonwaah from the Centre for Scientific Research, West Africa, began her presentation at the Climate X Culture Summit. The premise is that culture is where the message and impact of climate action are seen, heard, felt and lived the most. Cultural products like songs, films, games, outfits, installations and experiences reach audiences that policy papers do not. UN estimates put the global creative economy at more than $2tn in annual revenue and nearly 50 million jobs. Yet Africa accounted for only 1.5% of that economy in 2023, according to Brookings. The sector’s reach is large, and so is its room to grow. If climate action is to mean more than it does now, it has to enter culture, not stand outside it. 2. A Sustainable Events Industry Requires A United Front Sustainability in Ghana’s festival sector is neither a hoax nor a fantasy. Many operators across the country have been doing their bit to tackle waste. But as Ruddy Kwakye observed in his solidarity message, the effort is fragmented; the industry tends to “subdivide ourselves into smaller spaces” and “become tinier instead of combining to become bigger”. So much is being done in siloes. Consider why that matters. A festival draws 100,000 people to a city. It is a win for the promoter and the industry. The organiser spends a little more on sanitation and hires extra waste pickers; nothing is left on the ground, and everyone applauds. But that waste has to go somewhere. A weekend of 100,000 revellers can strain a landfill that never expected the load. As the landfill struggles to cope, the tricycle collector who services the neighbourhood waits longer to offload. The longer he waits, the greater the temptation to cut corners and leave refuse at the roadside. During Detty December, Ghana’s end-of-year festive season of back-to-back events, who is measuring the cumulative effect on the city’s waste system? The scale of the problem is poorly documented. Ghana generates roughly 840,000 tonnes of plastic waste a year, of which about 9.5% is collected for recycling. Other estimates are higher: some studies put annual plastic waste at 1.1 to 1.3 million tonnes. Kwakye was candid about the weakness of the data, describing the 840,000 figure as “a projection of a projection of a projection”. Without reliable counts, he argued, there is nothing for policymakers to plan around. His first rule for organisers: count honestly. Report 50 people if 50 came, and 500 if 500 did. The author, Peter Ansah and his co-panelists at Climate x Culture Summit in Accra This is where we need imagination and rethinking beyond the usual solutions of installing more waste bins at festivals. How do we stop waste way before it enters the venue, or turn festival waste into wages, leave the site as you found it, and cut noise and diesel generator use? How do we even codify and index our footprint, generating accurate festival data points that policy can plan around? Sustainability planning for festivals starts way before your first ticket gets sold and long after teardown. It means building shared systems and a common way to measure the footprint of events, so that one promoter’s good practice does not become another town’s problem. 3. Yes, we can design sustainable experiences. But who pays? Green financing decides whether any of these initiatives scale. The creative sector is large but chronically under-financed, and a greener operation costs more at the start. Japan offers a revealing comparison. Its supporters have been seen tidying stadiums since the 1998 World Cup, and they did it again after the 2-2 draw with the Netherlands in Dallas this June. But the fans bring their own bin bags. The tradition works because the cost and the habit are carried by the public and other private bodies. Ghana cannot count on that. Who pays for the bags, the sorting and the collection? What incentive does a festival operator have to adopt low-waste site design, from permaculture landscaping to reusable infrastructure? Policy may offer part of an answer. Ghana’s Green Finance Taxonomy is West Africa’s first national green taxonomy, and the Ministry of Finance released its first phase in October 2024. Its screening criteria centre on areas such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, green urban development, biodiversity conservation and ecotourism. Whether festivals and experience providers can use it to reduce the perceived risk of green investment has yet to be tested. Art and culture cannot replace investments or policy. It is only an access point, as argued by Eric Lartey of the World Resources Institute, meant to be leveraged for the greater good of humanity. There is significant evidence that creative and culture businesses can lead climate action. The sector’s weight deserves a seat at the table where climate policy and finance are decided. Beyond proving that, the Climate X Culture summit’s organisers, CultureJoint, have promised an Accra Accord and Sustainable Event Production Guide to help turn its conversations and recommendations into action. The real test, for the short term, is whether, come the first weekend of Detty December, someone is counting. The author, Peter Ansah, is a strategist and culture journalist from Accra, with over a decade in media, MarCom, and festivals. He has written, contributed and produced content for platforms including Brut, MusicInAfrica, and Legit Media. Working with top brands in entertainment and culture like Afro Nation, Morgan Heritage, and the, Peter brings a global perspective to his work, which has also proven useful in start-up environments where he acts as a multi-hyphenate and builds systems.