Edwin A. Gyasi

Production pressure and environmental change in the forest-savanna zone of Southern Ghana

Abstract This study confirms the view that changes in the biophysical environment are significantly related to production pressure. The scattered concentrations of forest species in Ghanas forest-savanna zone evidently are relics of a dominant natural forest. Deforestation has entailed environmental quality deterioration, including biodiversity loss, and impoverishment of the soils. Farmers try to counter environmental change by modifying cropping and intensifying production, but without much success because of poverty and tenurial and technological constraints. Associated with population and market pressures for production, the change calls for greater attention to sustainable small farmer environmental management systems.

Managing Threats and Opportunities of Urbanisation for Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture in Tamale, Ghana

Urbanisation involves growth and transformation of settlements into increasingly large spatially sprawling cities. By encroaching upon agricultural land, taxing water resources and enticing rural people away from farming, urbanisation poses a threat to agriculture within both the built-up and peri-urban areas. Growing climate variability, an apparent sign of climate change, exacerbates the threat. At the same time, through an increased demand for food, the potential for affordable organic manure from urban waste and a need for efficient intensive land use urbanisation may encourage agricultural production and, thereby, enhance urban food security. Preliminary findings of an on-going inter-institutional, inter-disciplinary assessment focused on Tamale, a rapidly growing city in Ghana, show that farmers seek to manage the agricultural threats and opportunities by various ingenuous survival strategies, notably livelihoods diversification, new cultivars, and land use intensification. This paper highlights the strategies and argues that if they are nurtured and integrated into policy they would positively inform sustainable urban development planning.

Mapping vulnerability to multiple hazards in the savannah Ecosystem in Ghana

The interior savannah ecosystem in Ghana is subjected to a number of hazards, including droughts, windstorms, high temperatures and heavy rainfall. The frequency and intensity of these hazards are projected to increase during the twenty-first century as a result of climate variability and change. Vulnerabilities to these hazards vary, both spatially and temporally, due to differences in susceptibilities and adaptive capacities. Many mapping exercises in Ghana have considered the impacts of single hazards on single sectors, particularly agriculture. But the hazards often occur concurrently or alternately and have varying degrees of impacts on different sectors. The impacts also interact. These interactions make mapping of the vulnerabilities of multiple sectors to multiple hazards imperative. This paper presents an analysis of the spatial dimension of vulnerabilities by mapping vulnerability of sectors that support livelihood activities at a single point in time, using the Upper East Region of Ghana as a case study. Data collected to develop the maps were largely quantitative and from secondary sources. Other data drew on fieldwork undertaken in the region from July to September 2013. Quantitative values were assigned to qualitative categorical data as the mapping process is necessarily quantitative. Data were divided into susceptibility and adaptive capacity indicators and mapped in ArcGIS 10.2 using weighted linear sum aggregation. Agriculture was found to be the most vulnerable sector in all districts of the Upper East Region and experienced the greatest shocks from all hazards. Although all districts were vulnerable, the Talensi, Nabdam, Garu-Temapane and Kassena-Nankana West Districts were most vulnerable. Findings highlight the need for more targeted interventions to build adaptive capacity in light of the spatial distributions of vulnerabilities to hazards across sectors.

The Ghana Model for Resilience Enhancement in Semiarid Ghana: Conceptualization and Social Implementation

Many government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and academic and research institutions have over the past two decades conducted studies and implemented actions aimed at developing frameworks, models, and tools to assess the resilience to climate and ecosystem changes of vulnerable communities. However, actions and studies encompassing empirical field tests of the assessment instruments are relatively few. This chapter reports the outcomes of an empirically applied resilience assessment framework, hereafter referred to as the “Ghana Model,” which was initiated as part of the “Enhancing Resilience to Climate and Ecosystem Changes in Semi-Arid Africa: An Integrated Approach (CECAR-Africa)” project, implemented in Ghana’s semiarid ecosystem. The chapter provides a concise description of the “Ghana Model” as an integrated resilience assessment framework as underpinned by seven principles while highlighting the concrete actions and steps taken in operationalizing it. As a clinically valid approach for resilience assessment, the Ghana Model provides valuable evidence to aid decision and policymakers in Ghana in designing and implementing adaptation strategies for climate change in vulnerable communities and households. As a resilience assessment template, it can be applied in other ecosystems within other sub-Saharan African countries as well as other developing economies. The Ghana Model can enrich ongoing discourse on global sustainability as well as provide relevant output toward the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.

Strategies for Building Resilience against Climate and Ecosystem Changes in Sub-Saharan Africa

This book summarizes studies on climate and ecosystem change adaptation and resilience in Africa (CECAR-Africa), a collaboration with the goal of creating an integrated resilience enhancement strategy as a potential model for semi-arid regions across Sub-Saharan Africa by combining climate change and ecosystem change research. The case studies were conducted at multiple scales – local, national, and regional – and incorporate the natural sciences, social sciences and engineering in a transdisciplinary manner while also integrating the needs of local communities. The book chiefly addresses three thematic areas, namely: Forecast and assessment of climate change impacts on agro-ecosystems; Risk assessment of extreme weather hazards and development of adaptive resource management methods; and Implementing capacity development programs for local leaders and practitioners. The collaborative nature of the project and the use of various quantitative and qualitative research techniques and methods – such as field surveys, questionnaires, focus group discussions, land use and cover change analysis, and climate downscaled modeling – make the book truly unique. Especially at a time when both long-term climate change and short-term extreme weather events such as droughts and floods are worsening, this book offers potential approaches to developing an integrated framework for assessing the local ability to cope with floods and droughts, and for enhancing the resilience of farming communities in developing countries, which are the most vulnerable to these changes and extreme weather events. As such, it will be of interest to a wider audience, including academics, professionals, and government officials alike.

Adaptation to Climate Change: Lessons from Farmer Responses to Environmental Changes in Ghana

In developing agricultural countries, climate change poses a major socioeconomic threat because agriculture, which is the primary source of livelihood, is mainly rain fed. As such, agriculture is highly susceptible to climate change, including deteriorating moisture conditions. Aware of their vulnerability to adverse changes in local environments, as a survival strategy, smallholder farmers use their knowledge of the environment to modify the farming and other resource management practices along with their socioeconomic conduct as a whole in the wake of their changing operating circumstances. This chapter argues that such responses, which are borne out of traditional, local, or indigenous knowledge, offer lessons for the formulation of realistic local-level strategies to adapt to climate change to complement systematic scientific models. It draws from case studies in Ghana to explore the prospects of developing such strategies. Based on the case studies, we identified more than 50 actual responses to environmental change, including agrodiverse biological responses that appear particularly appropriate for developing climate change-adaptive models and, possibly, for developing mitigative measures, which farmers recognize as an important need.