Browsing by Subject "Forest governance"

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Farming forest enclosures : contestations, practices and implications for tackling deforestation in Ghana
(2022) Kumeh, Eric Mensah; Birner, Regina
Scientists and policymakers are waking to the menacing impacts of deforestation on biodiversity and the livelihoods of the over one billion people reliant on forests. Concurrently, an upward trend in population and its corresponding rise in the global demand for feed, food, fuel, and fibre exerts new demands on limited land resources available to multiple stakeholders. As the competition over land intensifies, many farmers in the tropics employ several strategies to cultivate areas designated as forest reserves for their livelihoods, leading to further deforestation and conflicts with state forestry agencies. Moreover, despite decades of investments in institutions to directly fund smallholder farmers’ participation in rehabilitating deforested landscapes, little is known about the reach and performance of existing financial incentive mechanisms. This dissertation adds to filling these knowledge gaps based on qualitative case studies embedded in multiple analytical and data collection approaches in Ghana, which loses near 2% (135,000 ha) of its forests annually despite several efforts to overcome the challenge. Following a brief introduction and clarification of conceptual underpinning in Chapter 1, the knowledge gaps are addressed with three empirical publications (chapters 2-4). Chapter two examines why and how farmers in forest communities gain and secure access to their farmlands within forest reserves to produce food and cash crops against state law. Through process-net maps, focus group discussions, interviews, and field observation, data were gathered through an extended field stay in Ghana’s Juabeso district. The findings unbridle the multiple structural and relational mechanisms farmers apply to evade state attempts to rein in illegal farming in the area and how institutional deficiencies, notably corruption and elite capture of farming benefits by native chiefs, reinforce farming in forest reserves. The chapter discusses the broader implications of the findings for the Ghanaian government’s attempts to accelerate forest landscape rehabilitation, noting that such efforts will need to adapt to the multiple struggles and latent actor interests to succeed. Chapter three disentangles the narratives and experiences of forest communities and compares them with the current assumptions underlying forest policy in Ghana from the perspective of the most dominant forest policy actors. The results contend with current assumptions that portray forest communities as environmentally destructive. Alternatively, it reveals that while several factors combine to drive forest-dependent communities to cultivate forest reserves, the challenge of food insecurity is paramount but unconveyed to the forest policy arena. The chapter proposes a novel concept of food security corridors (FSCs) as a meta-narrative for harmonising competing actor interests in forest reserves. The chapter also discusses the feasibility of FSCs and calls for further efforts to refine and pilot the concept in the global search for solutions to forest and agriculture land-use conflicts in the tropics. Chapter four examines the governance of Ghana’s Forest Plantation Development Fund as an incentive system instituted to attract smallholders into landscape rehabilitation based on interviews with tree growers, forestry officials and NGO staff. The study revealed that the legal provisions instituted to ensure the fund’s transparent operation were not implemented by fund administrators. Many stakeholders were clueless about the Fund and could neither access nor demand accountability in its administration. The chapter clarifies the information needs of various fund stakeholders, such as eligibility criteria, funding cycles, annual inflows and outflows, and a list of beneficiaries. It also discusses the implications of the findings, including mechanisms required to trigger the transparent running of the fund by its administrators. The thesis reveals new patterns of perennial land competition between state and traditional institutions. It demonstrates how prevailing institutional challenges reinforce this competition and enable unsustainable land use to flourish. At the same, it points to lapses in governance, including state failure to evolve its forest policies to meet changing demands and needs among contemporary actors and how the same challenges curtail access and ability to support forestation rehabilitation efforts in Ghana. Overall, the thesis notes that while tackling farming in forest reserves can be challenging due to its multiple drivers and the competing actor interests, FSCs have the potential to serve as an entry point that enables government and other actors to resolve their differences and find lasting solutions that enable local communities to achieve their livelihoods needs while contributing to sustainable land use. However, for this potential to be realised, actors need to invest in refining and piloting FSCs in specific localities.