Analyse de la mise en œuvre par le Gouvernement de la République Centrafricaine du plan d’action pour le renforcement de la chaine légale de diamants bruts
Analysis of the Central African Republic Government’s implementation of the action plan for strengthening the legal chain for rough diamonds.
The research was designed and executed under the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) activity. Data collection was carried out from May through July 2021.
Secure and transferable property rights for land and housing are a key driver of economic development, environmental sustainability, and social stability, and are an important focus of public policy. To better protect property rights and develop effective policies and programs in this area (e.g., the USAID Land for Prosperity Activity [LFP] in Colombia), policymakers and practitioners require a clear picture of the current level of tenure security across countries, sub-national jurisdictions, and groups of people, and they need to be able to track changes across time. An increasingly popular measure of tenure security is individuals’ perceptions of tenure security (PTS) – a subjective assessment of the risk of losing property rights. The main benefit of PTS over other measures of tenure security, such as possession of formal/government-issued documents confirming property rights, is related to its comparability across tenure forms (including informal) and legal systems. However, as has been noted in survey design literature and program implementation practice, differences in how to measure PTS may lead to inconsistencies in assessment and thus in programmatic and policy recommendations.
This study draws on new data collected in Colombia of individuals’ PTS, based on the Prindex methodology, to learn more about the formulation of measurement scales for this increasingly used metric. It is motivated by the expanding set of studies of tenure security around the world using different measurement scales and a corresponding need to understand the impact of these differences for comparability and reliability of the results used in policy discourse. This study also contributes to learning about tenure security in some of the most conflict-affected areas of Colombia. The data from Colombia was collected using two different measurement scales and allows analysis of the impact of these approaches. It provides corresponding recommendations for this type of research.
Download the brief and full report here.
In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector employs hundreds of thousands of people and plays an important role in the local economy. While largescale armed conflict over DRC’s mineral wealth has decreased significantly over the past twenty years, armed actors continuously interfere in the mining sector, and conflicts over resources at the local level are still common. The International Peace Information Service (IPIS) has mapped around 2,720 ASM sites in eastern DRC since 2009, collecting primary data about the interference of armed groups, types of minerals, mineral pricing, worker demographics, trade routes, environmental issues, etc.
As ASM sites continuously change, IPIS regularly updates its database and map of mine sites as new information is gathered during each visit. Within the framework of its latest mines mapping project, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) project, IPIS visited 450 artisanal mining sites in eastern DRC between September 2021 and March 2022. In total, 354 were active sites, spread over different provinces, namely Haut-Uele, Tshopo, North Kivu, South Kivu, Maniema, and Tanganyika.
IPIS selects study areas based on a few criteria, including interesting new developments, time since the area was last visited, and whether other ASM stakeholders or (international) partners express an interest in a particular zone. In each area, teams visit as many sites as possible within the time of their research trip, giving priority to the most productive sites.
This report presents a summary of the information collected and interim findings. Further site visits and data collection will continue until early 2023.
Download the full report in English here.
Download the executive summary in French here.
In order to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming below two degrees Celsius, the world’s energy systems need shift their reliance from fossil fuels to alternate energy sources. The technological solutions from photovoltaic cells to lithium-ion batteries, known colloquially as green energy, may be less fuel intensive, but they are more material intensive than non-renewable technologies. The growing global demand for green energy and the critical raw materials that fuel its production, including minerals, will significantly impact the environment, social and economic structures, and livelihoods of people around the world. Recent global studies (Drexhage et al., 2017; Hund et al., 2020; IEA, 2021) predict demand increases of up to ten times current production levels for minerals like cobalt, graphite, and lithium. No matter the mix of alternate energy sources the world turns to, the mining sector will be a key player in the years ahead.
The projected increase in mineral demand from green energy is already influencing commodity markets, supply chains, and geopolitics. Unlike raw materials needed for fossil-fuel source energy, minerals needed for green energy technologies are diverse and dispersed widely: over two dozen minerals are mined across more than 100 countries. The potential for an international mining boom is already sparking concern among development experts. While it could foster growth and employment benefitting millions, more mining also carries significant environmental, governance, national security, human rights, and social risks. Failure to address these risks could lead to increased fragility, poverty, and conflict in many developing countries. That, in turn, could create bottlenecks that affect global mineral supply, create market uncertainty, slow the global clean energy transition (IEA, 2021, p. 192) and ultimately jeopardize important the national security goals of the United States (US) and its allies.
This report reviews the challenges and opportunities for donors such as USAID to engage in the mining sector in developing countries as it relates to the green energy transition. Although 29 minerals were identified as playing a current or potential role in green energy technologies, this study reviewed 16 mined in USAID-presence countries that are projected to be particularly important, including 9 that are on the 2018 US Critical Minerals list.
View the full report here. See links below for individual fact sheets on each of the 16 green energy minerals mined in USAID-presence countries.
A Review and Recommendations for Applied Research
The far-reaching impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic highlight the urgent need to understand and mitigate future zoonotic disease emergence. Zoonoses are diseases caused by pathogens that spread from animals to humans; ‘spillover’ is the process of cross-species pathogen transmission; and zoonotic spillover describes cross-species pathogen emergence from animal to human hosts. Over the past century, three out of every four emerging or reemerging infectious diseases in humans have been zoonotic in origin, and probably more. Zoonotic pathogens pose an ongoing and significant health and economic burden—as underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of writing the SARS-CoV-2 virus has killed more than 3 million people and shut down the global economy, pushing millions of people into extreme poverty. SARS-CoV-2 is only one of several recent zoonotic viruses, which have resulted in large human outbreaks and caused significant impact on human livelihoods across the globe. As evidenced by the emergence and reemergence of SARS, MERS, Ebola, Chikungunya, and Zika viruses within the past half-century, pandemics are not once-in-a-century events, and the next pandemic-causing pathogen will likely originate in animal species.
Forest disturbance and land conversion can significantly increase risk for zoonoses in the months and years following change, but these risks may be possible to mitigate through integrated One Health programs and policies. Preventing emerging zoonoses in changing landscapes can provide simultaneous benefits to biodiversity conservation and public health. By addressing gaps in knowledge of the ecological and sociological drivers of zoonoses, we can inform effective interventions to prevent zoonoses and target disease surveillance. We build on previous research and draw on expertise from global health, land and resource governance, conservation, disease ecology, virology, forest economics, and other disciplines to synthesize gaps in understanding of viral zoonotic risk and quantify and evaluate the impacts of interventions aimed to mitigate viral zoonotic emergence at the human-environment interface.
Land use change is a key driver of zoonotic emergence. Conversion of natural habitat leads to biodiversity loss, changes in the distribution of zoonotic host species, and increased human-wildlife contact, all of which have cascading health consequences for humans and communities. Research has shown that intermediate levels of land conversion are likely to pose the highest risk to humans, but this risk is conditional on pathogen traits and the animal host communities that remain in these converted landscapes. Land use change is a dominant feature of landscapes globally and negative consequences of these changes will disproportionately affect already marginalized communities. There is an urgent need to: 1) identify landscapes, present and future, at greater risk of zoonotic disease emergence and 2) understand the mechanisms that drive this risk in changing landscapes in order to design more effective interventions.
This report derives from a March-May 2021 workshop series under the USAID Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) program, with participation by USAID and outside experts from across disciplines. Based on findings from the workshop, this report reviews the latest science across disciplines and proposes specific activities and applied research questions. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of zoonoses prevention and mitigation. Global health and medical experts, veterinarians, and environmentalists advocate for a ‘One Health approach’ to zoonoses—which integrates human, animal, and environmental health science to address mechanisms underlying pathogen transmission at the animal-environment-human interface. This report was prepared in the spirit of One Health.
The government of Ghana claims state ownership of all “naturally occurring” trees, including on land privately held under customary title. The lack of tree tenure and inability to capture economic benefits from trees is a major driver of tree loss and disincentivizes cocoa agroforestry. This report analyzes tree tenure law and policy in Ghana, including the proposed tree registration policy and justifications for state ownership of naturally occurring trees based in the 1992 Constitution. The authors propose an alternative interpretation of the 1992 Constitution based on customary law and usage that allows devolution of all tree rights to customary landowners without a constitutional amendment and removes the need for a tree registry. Evidence from devolution of tree tenure in the Sahel and China show that devolution can lead to increased tree cover. Based on this analysis a series of recommendations on tree tenure reform are posed for government, the cocoa sector, donors, and civil society.
Ghana is the world’s second largest cocoa producer, and cocoa plays a critically important role in the economy with an estimated 30 percent of Ghana’s population dependent on cocoa for part or all of their livelihoods. However, the cocoa sector is in trouble and smallholder cocoa production does not provide a reliable livelihood or ensure a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.
Traditional cocoa farms retained large shade trees which preserved many economically and environmentally important trees within the landscape. In the late 1950s the government inserted itself into the timber market and claimed rights to naturally occurring trees on cocoa farms. This led to increased timber harvesting from cocoa farms that was exacerbated in the 1980’s when Ghana’s cocoa marketing board changed its policy and advocated removing shade trees to increase cocoa productivity. The new cocoa board policy produced short term yield gains, but also increased susceptibility to diseases and shortened cocoa trees’ productive life. The combined pressures from forestry and cocoa led to deforestation and fragmentation of forest landscape in Ghana’s high forest zone and widespread removal of shade trees from farms. An average of 138,000 hectares of forest was lost per year from 2000 to 2015 and in 2007 it was estimated that 72 percent of cocoa farms across Ghana had “no to light” levels of shade.
The government of Ghana and cocoa industry actors acknowledge the vital role of improved cocoa production systems to mitigate and adapt to climate change, maintain biodiversity, conserve and enhance ecosystem services, and improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers and their families. They recognize that increasing the number and quality of trees in Ghana’s cocoa-growing landscape is critical to improve the health and sustainability of cocoa production and diversify income and resilience for cocoa households.
A leading challenge to planting more shade trees is government ownership and control of all naturally occurring timber trees – even on privately held land. State ownership of naturally occurring trees is widely considered a strong disincentive for landowners and smallholders, regardless of land tenure, to nurture trees on their cocoa farms. In part this is because the benefits of harvesting naturally occurring trees are shared between loggers, traditional authorities, and the government, but landowners are excluded. Numerous government policy documents over the last decade have advocated for vesting title to naturally occurring trees with communities and farmers who cultivate and tend these trees.
The current tree tenure reform efforts are focused on establishing a national tree registry where farmers can register title to trees on their land. Early tree registration policy allowed farmers to register planted trees as proof of ownership but maintained state ownership of naturally occurring trees. More recent policy allows farmers to register both planted and naturally occurring trees and separates rights to trees from rights to the land. This proposed separation of rights to land and trees changes customary tenure norms and creates the potential for conflict on many cocoa farms.
There are other problems with the proposed tree registration policy. If a farmer fails to register planted trees, the default determination is that planted trees were naturally occurring and owned by the state. It is also unrealistic and unsustainable to successfully establish and maintain a national tree registry. Tree registration is estimated to cost from $27 – $40 per farm, which scales to a cost of between US$47.5 million and US$86.4 million to register all the trees in Ghana’s cocoa farms. This does not include the Forestry Commission’s costs to process 1.7 million to 2.1 million individual records from cocoa farmers, the costs of tree registration in other parts of Ghana, or the costs to maintain the registry over time.
Government sponsored policy reforms that argue cocoa farmers should have rights over all trees growing on their farms are a significant and positive step in the right direction. However, these calls for reform are accompanied by arguments that the current law is based on the 1992 Constitution, and that any law reform requires difficult constitutional amendments. There are two key issues under the 1992 Constitution: i) how natural resources and rights to naturally occurring trees are interpreted; and ii) how revenue from these resources is allocated.
The government claims naturally occurring trees on cocoa farms are considered a natural resource, and ownership of these trees is not separated from ownership of the land. However, stool lands are vested in the Stool who own them “on trust” for the Stool subjects, with government involved in regulation and management. While customary rights to stool land can be passed down to farmers, the Stool and state have retained rights to natural resources to exercise their fiduciary responsibilities as trustee. As naturally occurring trees are part of the Stool’s resources, the Stool and government divide up the proceeds from timber revenue according to the constitutionally mandated split. This poses a major challenge as farmers are excluded from the revenue. Planted trees, on the other hand, are treated the same as crops whereby ownership does not by default coincide with ownership of the land. Farmers possess all ownership, management, and use rights to planted trees – and the subsequent benefits.
The authors analyzed the 1992 Constitution, customary tenure practices in the cocoa growing regions, and literature on tree tenure in Ghana and propose an alternative interpretation with two parts:
This alternative interpretation results in eliminating the distinction between naturally occurring and planted trees on customary land with all rights to all trees flowing with these family or individual rights to the land. It also removes the need to register trees and allows tree tenure policy reform to move ahead without a constitutional amendment. The proposed interpretation of the 1992 Constitution and recognition of farmer’s rights to all trees on their land should incentivize farmers to cultivate more timber and shade trees on their lands as they would be the legal and beneficial owners of these trees.
It can be difficult to establish a cause and effect relationship between tenure systems and sustainable forest systems, and evidence from other countries can help inform policy reform in Ghana. The most instructive cases for Ghana on devolution of rights are the innovative and impactful policy reforms that have been implemented in Sahelian West Africa and northern China. In both examples the devolution of rights to individuals led to increased forest cover, although in China this also required access to markets and benefits. This lesson from China is key: devolution of rights on its own may not be sufficient to incentivize tree planting. Devolution must be coupled with landowner’s access to markets and benefits.
Ghana can also look to neighboring Côte d’Ivoire, which has gone through rounds of forest law reform in 2014 and 2019 that has resulted in provisions to explicitly state that natural or planted trees belong to the landowner. However, uncertainty and conflicts over underlying land tenure in Côte d’Ivoire highlight the need to look at both the land and tree governance framework together, along with the needs and motivations of end users and other stakeholders.
Other countries have experimented with tree registration systems with contrasting results. In Thailand, a government bank invested US$1 billion as part of a corporate responsibility initiative to establish a tree bank to help farmers access loans and income and has successfully registered over 11 million trees. The Philippines shares more similarities to Ghana, where a registry was established to differentiate ownership of naturally occurring and planted trees, but this has not been successful.
The Government of Ghana and the USAID recognize that strengthening land and tree rights is critical for Ghana to achieve its development goals both within the cocoa sector and more broadly. However, forest resources in Ghana represent an important source of revenue for the government, so bold reforms that limit or remove the state’s control have met strong resistance by the Forestry Commission and customary powerholders, including the Stools and chiefs. As a result, years, even decades, of tweaking and modifying the legal and policy frameworks have been ineffective as the focus has been on enforcing and adjusting an inherently unenforceable and unfair legislative framework rather than tackling core issues.
Bold reform to divest tree tenure to customary landowners without any need to register each individual tree is needed. To help achieve this, a series of recommendations was developed for key stakeholders.
The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program is carrying out a two-year Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana activity, building on the work of USAID’s previous Tenure and Global Climate Change (TGCC) program. TGCC worked in the community of Nyame Nnae in Asankrangwa Stool in Wassa Amenfi District; local farmers were provided with land documentation approved by the Stool Chief, free of charge. Under the ILRG activity, subcontractor Meridia offered farmers in four communities in Asankrangwa a FarmSeal certificate of ownership, approved and recorded by the Stool Chief, with some cost subsidization by USAID. The cost subsidies were provided to try to create a level playing field so that all farmers, regardless of social category and relative wealth, could afford the cost of the documentation. The subsidy covered 20 to 70 percent of the cost of farm documentation.
This report is a summary of the work that Meridia carried out under the USAID ILRG project in four communities in the Asankrangwa Stool and reflects primarily the points of view of the field team delegated with the tasks of carrying out a sub-contract with Tetra Tech, the project implementing partner. The views expressed in this report are of the Meridia team itself and do not reflect policy positions by either USAID or the ILRG Ghana activity. An impact evaluation planned by the USAID Communication Evidence and Learning (CEL) project will be carried out to test, validate, or refute the findings and perspectives of the Meridia team https://www.land-links.org/project/communications-evidence-and-learning-cel/. Hopefully, the perspectives from field implementation experience will guide a more in-depth impact evaluation.
The Meridia FarmSeal service consists of a process of conducting community outreach and dialogue to introduce the service to farmers, mapping farm parcels and other geographic features, setting a sliding fee scale based on farm parcel size, and then registering the rights with the customary authorities. The service requires farmers to pay some, if not the majority, of the costs of the final FarmSeal document. By the end of Meridia’s initial efforts, 842 parcels had been mapped (591 male, 201 female, 47 no data because parcels were mapped but farmers never made themselves available for household interviews), with 766 farmers consenting to the mapping services (1.1 farms per farmer). Despite Meridia’s intensive community outreach and dialogue to encourage farmers to buy into the service, only 70 FarmSeal documents were sold, a far lower rate than anticipated. From Meridia’s perspective (recognizing that the USAID Communications, Evidence and Learning [CEL] project will conduct an evaluation of the land documentation process) (Persha et al, 2020) , low sales were due to the following major factors:
In order to reach the project’s target of at least 520 documents delivered,1 a joint decision between USAID and the ILRG Ghana task team was made to change the delivery approach and deliver all FarmSeal documents for free or for a token amount of 20 cedis (about USD $3.50) per parcel.
This report summarizes the lessons learned thus far through the experience gained in the four pilot villages. The major lessons are summarized here in order to inform similar land documentation approaches in Ghana and elsewhere.
Through the ILRG program in Ghana, Meridia will still be able to test the Ghana°Ground approach and technology, a method to collect and store land records on tablets that will enable the customary land secretariats to gain immediate insight into all documented landholdings and use this information to help prevent and mediate conflicts.
INTEGRATED LAND AND RESOURCE GOVERNANCE TASK ORDER UNDER THE STRENGTHENING TENURE AND RESOURCE RIGHTS II (STARR II) IDIQ
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is developing a policy to guide its engagement with indigenous peoples. USAID recognizes that indigenous peoples contribute to global development and have a crucial role to play in achieving the agency’s objectives. The policy will guide USAID’s efforts to include indigenous peoples as partners in its development programming. USAID aims to ensure that every USAID activity that impacts the lives, territories, resources, and/or livelihoods of indigenous peoples engages them directly to ensure that their communities benefit, their rights are respected, and they can practice self-determined development.
On October 23, 2018, USAID released a consultation Draft USAID Policy on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues (hereinafter the “draft policy”). To gain feedback on the draft policy, USAID posted the draft policy on its website for general public comment between October 23 and November 9th, 2018. USAID also hosted a two-day consultation meeting with indigenous peoples’ representatives and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) on November 14 – 15, 2018 in Washington DC. The consultation meeting was facilitated by the Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) Program, a USAID program implemented by Tetra Tech. ILRG is a task order under the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights II (STARR II) Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract supported by the USAID Land and Urban Office.
Indigenous peoples’ representatives from the following countries attended the consultation meeting: Bangladesh, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Indonesia, Kenya, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru. Some representatives of INGOs that work closely with indigenous peoples, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and USAID also participated. A total of 46 people attended the consultation meeting. Of these, there were 18 indigenous peoples’ representatives, 13 INGO representatives, one independent consultant, eight United States (US) government representatives, and six Tetra Tech representatives. An online platform was also made available for invited persons to contribute written comments on the draft policy both before and after the consultation meeting. Eight participants submitted comments before the November 9 deadline. Following the consultation meeting, participants were given a few additional days (until November 20) to submit additional written comments. Two more participants submitted comments by November 20.
The consultation meeting consisted of two main elements of discussion: a) Sessions for USAID to present the draft policy and its key components with time for participants to ask clarifying questions; and b) Sessions for indigenous peoples’ and INGO representatives to discuss the elements of the draft policy and express their views. This report is an output of the consultation meeting and the written input from its participants. It provides a summary of the perspectives and recommendations as expressed at the consultation meeting and as provided on the online platform in writing.
This report will be provided to all invited participants, and made available in English, French, and Spanish, in the spirit of the shared dialogue and conversations that took place during the consultation meeting. This report will also be used by USAID as it produces the final version of its new Policy on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues. As a summary, the report does not relay all comments made or all the details and background provided by participants. This report complements USAID’s own notes on the conversations that took place during the consultation meeting as well as their reading of the written comments submitted via the online platform.
The Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) task order under the Strengthening Tenure and Resource Rights II (STARR II) Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract provides support to the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Land and Urban Office in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment (E3/LU). ILRG develops and implements targeted interventions in select USAID presence and non-presence countries, providing technical assistance to improve land and resource governance, strengthen property rights, and build resilient livelihoods as the foundation for stability, resilience, and strong economic growth.
Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire together produce two-thirds of the world’s cocoa. Cocoa plays a critically important role in local and national economies, providing jobs, improved livelihoods and social welfare, expanded tax base, family and corporate income, and foreign exchange earnings growth. However, the long-term viability of cocoa farming is at risk in many parts of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire due to a number of factors, including climate change.1 For many years, smallholder cocoa has been the leading agricultural commodity driving deforestation in both countries. This deforestation increases greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and has a negative impact on biodiversity, soil fertility, and water quality and quantity; affects local rainfall; and threatens farmer livelihoods. In response, the governments of both countries and commodity buyers have made specific commitments to reduce and eliminate deforestation from their supply chains through the creation of initiatives such as the Cocoa and Forests Initiative and the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Programme (GCFRP) that will sell carbon credits to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.
Declining productivity of cocoa farms represents an additional challenge facing the West African cocoa sector. In Ghana, up to 40 percent of cocoa farms have low productivity and the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) estimates that 700,000 hectares (ha) of cocoa farms need to be replanted. Several challenges to large-scale farm rehabilitation exist. Farmers and communities lack the funding, labor resources, and technical know-how to replant old trees using best practices to rehabilitate old cocoa farms to be higher yielding and more resilient. Many farmers also have insecure land tenure arrangements that prevent or discourage them from replanting old farms and need help to improve tenure security.
The Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana activity is a partnership between USAID and private sector actors the Hershey Company (Hershey) and ECOM Agroindustrial Corp. (ECOM) to pilot and scale up a financially viable farm rehabilitation and land tenure strengthening model for the Ghanaian cocoa sector. In combination with land use planning, the model will result in reduced deforestation and GHG emissions and increased carbon sequestration in the cocoa landscape, increased cocoa farm productivity and resilience, diversified farmer incomes, and improved livelihoods. Working with the private sector to support viable business models will draw on the resources and expertise of private partners needed to help Ghana on its journey to self-reliance. The theory of change guiding this initiative is summarized in Figure 1-1.
In late May and early June 2019, a 10-person multidisciplinary team of Ghanaian and international specialists carried out a series of case studies in the four villages of Yirase, Domeabra, Suresu Nkwanta, and Nyame Nnae in the Western Region of the Wassa Amenfi West District and the Asankrangwa Stool. The objectives of the study (see Box 1-1) for each community were to:
The land use planning diagnostic (LUPD) primarily used rapid rural appraisal (RRA) and participatory rural appraisal (PRA) information gathering tools, complemented by a literature review. Information was successfully gathered in the four villages thanks to excellent cooperation with the local communities during an intensive information gathering process from May 24 – June 7, 2019. The data was analyzed and written up in a first draft during a writer’s workshop in Takoradi from June 10 – 14. The key findings are summarized in the sections below. A summary of key information for each of the four villages is presented in Annex A. Annex B presents the schedule for the study. Annex C includes key research questions and associated RRA research tools. The reference list is presented in Annex D.
During the field research, the USAID Communications, Evidence, and Learning (CEL) project carried out a complementary quantitative baseline study in the same four villages. The thematic research topics were defined by the two projects with the intent to provide an overall assessment of the present-day situation upon completion of the respective project analyses. A USAID and State Department team visited the ILRG field work from June 3 – 7, 2019 and provided valuable insights during rich discussions with the land use planning diagnostic team.
The LUPD takes a historical perspective to determine the broad structural factors that have shaped the landscape of the Wassa Amenfi West District from centuries past to the present. Section 2 presents the LUPD’s findings and notes the many interconnected factors, in both ecosystems and social systems, that have profoundly transformed the forested landscape over the centuries. With stunning rapidity, the Wassa Amenfi West forested landscape was shaped by the Wassa peoples largely through their control of the migrant labor force through complex land and labor arrangements from the 1980s to the present, which were complemented by state and private sector investment in a network of roads which facilitated settlement and export of timber and cocoa. From a time when the forested landscape seemed limitless, today the relics of the once-expansive primary forests are now largely situated in a narrow band of primary forest reserves surrounding the Wassa Amenfi West District and the district capital of Asankrangwa. Within these confines, the expansion of the cocoa frontier has largely been arrested, though pressures on the forest reserves are high. The forested landscape is now highly fragmented – best characterized as a mosaic of mixed tree cover of cocoa trees, some overstory of taller trees, and patches of primary and secondary bush-fallow. Thanks primarily to the labors of migrant settlers organized and abetted by the Wassa power elite, the pioneer frontier expansion phase is over.
In Section 3, the LUPD team argues that the conservation and restoration of the forested landscape capable of absorbing significant carbon requires a profound societal commitment by the people of the Wassa Amenfi West District themselves to a multifaceted vision for the future of their own territory. External actors, including donor organizations/activities like USAID and the ILRG Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana activity, should continue to construct a partnership with local communities to support this journey of environmental rehabilitation and economic and social development. The question may be raised by USAID and others – since there is little primary forest left to conserve, and carbon stocks are low, why invest United States government resources in this landscape? The answer is simple – the environmental and social context in Wassa Amenfi West District is symptomatic of the unfolding drama of tropical deforestation across West and Central Africa. Learning how to work with local communities, the private sector, and government to conserve and restore the resource base is an important challenge for the 21st century.
The LUPD recommends short, medium, and long-term strategies to launch the creation of a new human-derived landscape capable of absorbing carbon while also contributing to the economic development of the Wassa Amenfi West District. As suggested in this diagnostic, a combination of interventions at both the local and national level could go a long way towards creating new incentive packages leading to the emergence of new societal norms and behaviors toward the land. Tweaking policy and legal practices, such as simplifying timber and shade tree registration or working with landowners and tenants to tweak tenancy arrangements, might go a long way to changing the incentive structure. Similarly, the new technical and financial packages being tested by the private sector, like those of ECOM and the farm documentation services offered by Meridia and supported by ILRG, offer new opportunities if proven acceptable to local communities. Yet these measures are insignificant in comparison to broader structural incentives needed in the long term, such as higher farm-gate prices to farmers to reward and off-set labor costs for adopting environmentally friendly farm rehabilitation practices. To bring about the profound changes required to construct a landscape capable of absorbing carbon to some level equivalent to the primary forest is not easy, but not an impossible task.
The foundations of a profound change in consciousness and behavior at all levels of society is in the making. The Wassa landed elite appear to be concerned about the future of their territory and that of future generations. Since the Wassa are the historical holders of land rights to their territory, they determine to a large extent the future of the landscape. The Wassa will be under pressure to negotiate new abunu tenancy agreements with the various migrant groups who now occupy the landscape. With appropriate incentives, the Wassa may impose conditionalities on tenants to protect fallow lands, encourage planting of more shade and timber trees, and adopt other environmentally proactive comportments. At the same time, private land markets will continue to grow, further weakening the power of the Wassa to influence norms and behavioral practices.
International partners of the Ghanaian government and the people of Wassa Amenfi West District, like the ILRG Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana activity, can contribute strategically to a new environmental and social space. Confronted with extremely limited means, the challenge for USAID is to utilize the limited resources at its disposition in strategic and carefully targeted ways.