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Forest and Tree-Related Livelihood Conflicts in the Forest Governance Context of Ghana’s High Forest Zone |
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The 1994 forestry policy in Ghana gave ‘birth' to the concept of collaboration and decentralisation, with the hope that involvement of all stakeholders and the devolution of power to the lower levels could contribute to sustainable forest management and improvement in forest governance and livelihoods, especially at the community level. True to this, government, through the sector ministry and the forestry commission as well as civil society and the donor community have pursued several programs (establishment of CBOs-CFCS, CBAGs etc, boundary cleaning contract with forest fringe communities, Modified taungya systems etc) all aimed at promoting good forestry governance and livelihood innovations.
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Exploring governance innovations for improved Forest and tree-related livelihoods in Ghana’s high forest zone |
 One of the main goals of establishing and managing the forests in Ghana by governments and individuals is to have a sustainable resource that can provide livelihoods. However, the various forest dependent livelihoods (FDLs) in Ghana, which should act as sources of income and motivation for sustainable management and conservation of the forests, are not well developed. This is evident by the fact that there is lack of common understanding of what constitutes FDLs, forests are not making impacts on local economies and there is lack of understanding on contribution of forests to livelihoods. In addition, the existing forest based livelihoods are not sustainable and are also characterised by poor returns, making them unattractive. Clearly, there is no optimum use of forest and tree resources to improve livelihoods and poverty.
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Options for managing on-farm trees for timber production |
 In the last century Ghana has experienced a rapid decline of its forest resources, particularly timber trees in the off-reserve areas. This is driven partly by unequal rights and access to the economic trees as well as the present inequitable arrangement for sharing timber proceeds. In Ghana people have exclusive rights and access to trees they have planted, but not naturally regenerated trees on farms which have been nurtured, maintained and protected by farmers.
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Management of timber resources in areas outside forest reserves: Roles of stakeholders |
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In Ghana people have exclusive rights and access to trees they have planted, but not trees naturally occurring on farms that have been nurtured, maintained and protected by farmers. Ghana recently reviewed the benefit-sharing system in off-reserve areas and granted higher benefits from timber revenues to non-state institutional stakeholders, but farmers were left out. In addition, rural people close to the resource are denied the opportunity to use tree management as a legitimate livelihood strategy. Farmers contest this situation by killing trees and conniving with illegal chainsaw operators to harvest and process trees on their farms as this gives them some direct benefits. This situation is partly responsible for the rapid depletion of Ghana's timber resources.
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