Evidence from a contested landscape in Ghana

From conflict to collaboration through inclusive landscape governance: in this new paper, James Reed and fellow authors describe an engagement and visioning experience in Northern Ghana that holds lessons for ILM practitioners in so many other landscapes.

Donkey transportation in Northern Ghana.
 
Photo by Axel Fassio/CIFOR

These engagement processes enabled stakeholders to reflect on their contributions and the historical and contemporary challenges obstructing landscape resilience and sustainability. Despite the contested nature of land and natural resource use, stakeholders were able to agree on specific issues of common concern and an idealized shared vision of a future landscape… We expect that the theory of change model and recommendations within can inform the development of a sustainable landscape management plan and future evidence-based policy.

Reed et Al.

The Western Wildlife Corridor (WWC) in Ghana’s Northern Savannah ecological zone is a contested landscape where efforts to reverse widespread environmental degradation often conflict with local livelihood concerns and broader development objectives. Despite policy measures to devolve natural resource decision-making authority, poor environmental management, persistent socioeconomic challenges, and increasingly limited livelihood op- portunities for people living within the corridor prevail. This study investigates environmental degradation in the WWC and natural resource governance using information on stakeholder perceptions from stakeholder work- shops, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews. We also explore how natural resource management might be strengthened to better deliver social, economic, and environmental goals. We found that despite a history of contestation, stakeholders were able to agree upon specific issues of common concern and generate a collaborative vision for the WWC landscape. Transitioning toward such a vision requires significant investment in strengthening current governance structures and building natural resource management capacity within the corridor and beyond. Furthermore, persistent challenges of conflicting stakeholder objectives and issues related to coordination, corruption, and non-inclusion in decision-making about natural resources must be addressed to advance progress. Stakeholders were able to formulate specific recommendations and a participatory theory of change to inform the development of a sustainable landscape management plan and future evidence-based policy that could steer the WWC toward a more resilient and multifunctional system that equitably supports livelihoods, biodiversity, and wider economic development. The methods for inclusive engagement in environmental decision-making are extrapolatable to other contexts facing similar social-environmental challenges.

Moreover, sector-specific discussions and group negotiations helped formulate concrete short-, mid-, and long-term objectives and specific actions, interventions, and a suite of potential solutions to current barriers that combined could help to reorient and transform the governance and management of the WWC. These recommendations enabled us to generate a working theory of change for the WWC landscape that will be shared and validated with a broader group of stakeholders, including those not present at the workshops.

Reed et al.

Farmer-Fulani pastoralist conflicts in Northern Ghana: are integrated landscape approaches the way forward?

This paper examines conflicts between farmers and Fulani pastoralists in Northern Ghana, focusing on access to natural resources. The social marginalization of the Fulani community and their exclusion from landscape governance processes are identified as key issues. The study explores the potential for integrated landscape approaches to manage conflicts and include Fulani pastoralists in governance. Insights from Burkina Faso's experience in managing farmer-herder conflicts are presented. The paper argues that adopting more inclusive landscape approaches can reconcile diverging interests and mitigate conflicts. Urgent attention is needed to address negative perceptions, neglect of pastoral activity in development processes, and lack of inclusion in decision-making.

Using Scenario Building and Participatory Mapping to Negotiate Conservation-Development Trade-Offs in Northern Ghana

In multifunctional landscapes, expanding economic activities jeopardise the integrity of biodiverse ecosystems, generating conservation-development trade-offs that require multi-stakeholder dialogue and tools to negotiate conflicting objectives. Despite the rich literature on participatory mapping and other tools to reveal different stakeholder perspectives, there is limited evidence on the application of such tools in landscape-scale negotiations.
Published in MDPI