Document Type: Reports

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.

A Review and Recommendations for Applied Research

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.

Download the full report here.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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.

COCOA AND FORESTS

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.

TREE TENURE: A KEY CHALLENGE TO RESTORING COCOA FOREST LANDSCAPE

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.

TREE REGISTRATION IS NOT EFFECTIVE TREE TENURE REFORM

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.

THE 1992 CONSTITUTION: A BARRIER TO REFORM?

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.

INTERPRETATION OF THE 1992 CONSTITUTION THAT PROTECTS VESTED INTERESTS

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.

ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION THAT SUPPORTS DEVOLUTION

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:

• First, the main customary land rights of usufructs, asideε, and abunu that support rural farmland holdings are created by clearing the natural resource of the primary forest. As a result, there is no remaining natural resource on usufruct, asideε, or abunu farmland.
• Second, all trees that are currently considered “naturally occurring” (and therefore argued to be a natural resource owned by the stool) are more correctly understood as farmed trees. As a result, they should be treated the same as planted trees and owned by the landowner.

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.

LESSONS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES

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.

RECOMMENDATIONS

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.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF GHANA

1. Enact law reform to divest all tree rights to landowners. The law should be clear that all rights to all trees flows with rights to the land and this applies to customary rights holders. Rights to emission reductions can be separated from tree tenure and should not prevent devolution.
2. Implement and enforce existing permit regimes to generate revenue for the Forestry Commission. This can help replace lost revenue from the devolution of tree tenure.
3. Establish a fit-for-purpose rural land registry.
4. Engage in public consultation and outreach during and after the reform process.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE COCOA SECTOR

1. Re-direct funds away from tree registration pilots to focus on other priorities.
2. Expand tree planting programs. This could be coupled with other policy innovations such as a payment for ecosystem services scheme or a tree bank like in Thailand.
3. Support customary land title registration.
4. Work with industry associations to support tree tenure reform including outreach to cocoa farmers.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DONORS

1. Develop a unified response to Ghana’s tree registration policy to ensure donor support is aligned.
2. Help Ghana finalize the necessary legal and policy reforms to devolve tree tenure, including how devolution can comply with the sale of emission reductions to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. This may include supporting some of the outreach and convening and other costs of the reform process.
3. Support additional research on devolution of tree tenure. For example, ILRG suggests carrying out further analysis to help quantify Forestry Commission revenue from the proposed reforms.
4. Support land title registration, including through use of cost-effective mapping technologies and digital databases.
5. Support public outreach on tree tenure.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CIVIL SOCIETY

1. Conduct outreach and engagement with all stakeholders to help push for reform.
2. Support tree planting programs, particularly once reform has been enacted.

 

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Executive Summary 

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:

• Farmers believed that the FarmSeal documents should be free because certificates were previously issued in Nyame Nnae at no cost under the TGCC pilot. While this was an experimental and pilot initiative, farmers nevertheless felt that the ILRG project possessed the means to distribute free FarmSeal certificates and thus that all farmers in the area should be treated equally.
• Farmers held limited funds to pay for FarmSeal services due to the poor financial viability of cocoa farming.
• One of the influential village chiefs, an odikro, expressed his view that the purchase of FarmSeal documentation would not preclude the need to negotiate new tenure arrangements with landowners when current tenancy arrangements come to an end, generally at the point when cocoa fields must be replanted after old age or disease. Even though the ILRG and Meridia team believed at the outset of land documentation that the customary tenure agreements would hold firm, this single disagreement led to a major impasse (see Section 2.2.5 below for more detail). Since a large number of trees in the pilot villages are indeed in need of replacement, the concern raided by the odikro seemed well-founded to other chiefs.

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.

• The land documentation pilot led to a deeper understanding of the applicability of the pricing model in Ghana’s cocoa-growing areas. Meridia prepared a pricing spectrum model from fully commercial sales to full subsidization, with an intermediate cost recovery model, depending on underlying situational factors. Although ILRG initially took the cost recovery approach, in the end the project had to return to a full subsidization model.
• The willingness to pay for a farm documentation service is determined by a wide range of factors. From the perspective of Meridia, in hindsight, it now seems that the cost recovery model may have been doomed from the outset because the previous USAID TGCC project in the Asankangrawa Stool had provided free certificates in a nearby community. This key conclusion should be more fully addressed by the endline evaluation that will be carried out by the USAID CEL project. But other factors are also at play: support from traditional leaders for a fee-for-service is essential, but in Asankrangwa, the acting stool chief may not have exercised as much influence as a fully sitting chief. Ultimately, the farmers themselves need to perceive the benefits of land documentation. Strong demand for the service did not emerge for many reasons, but perhaps principally because landowners remain convinced of their rights and authority over land, and the abunu tenant farmers remain cognizant of their subordinate status.
• The central premise of the cost recovery initiative and the experiment in the four pilot villages was to reduce dependency on donor subsidization of land documentation. While the techniques of land documentation (mapping, establishing databases, and issuing certificates) are now refined, the heart of the issue – subsidization – is not resolved. In other parts of Ghana, it appears that farmers want to purchase land documentation services, possess a greater ability to pay, and are thus they are willing to pay for a greater share of a FarmSeal document. Since this is not the case in the four ILRG villages of the Asankrangwa Stool, the verdict is still out. In situations like those in the Asankrangwa Stool, land documentation will mostly likely continue to require subsidization by government, the private sector, or donors.
• Under TGCC, Meridia carried out a pilot land documentation initiative focused on documenting customary rights as found at the time in the community through a process of dialogue and discussion with community members and traditional authorities. Contrary to other similar land documentation projects in Ghana, Meridia did not try to fit the documentation process into the statutory framework or generic customary title documents circulating around the country. The systemic complexities of fee-for-service land documentation described in this report still remain at the stool level and especially around the maintenance of land records, whether through a subsidized service delivery model or not. Maintenance of land records at the stool level through the customary land secretariats is difficult across all the secretariats in Ghana, and government commitment to adequate financing and support of these secretariats is generally lacking.

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.

 

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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.

 

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Executive Summary

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.

Context

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.

Land Use Planning Diagnostic

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:

1. Describe the ecological and contextual situation;
2. Assess the tenurial situation;
3. Identify the resource governance institutions; and
4. Assess the opportunities for land use planning in the Wassa Amenfi West District.

 Methodology

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.

Findings and Recommendations

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.

 

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