Francis Obeng

Climate and livelihood change in North East Ghana

The case study area of North-east Ghana consists of a densely populated zone in Upper East Region and a less densely populated area in Northern Region. It was selected as an example of a rural area with sub-humid conditions, a relatively high average population density and relatively severe land degradation. A major part of the chapter describes the lack of consistency between rainfall data and crop yield data and tries to explain farmers’ behaviour as a constant adaptation to the rainfall situation, embedded in a volatile socio-economic environment. Farmers acknowledge climate change, and they, government institutions and non-governmental agencies have responded with more emphasis on water provision and land management improvements and with more emphasis on sector and geographical differentiation, including much more reliance on migration and remittance income.

Participatory Assessment of Development Interventions: Lessons Learned from a New Evaluation Methodology in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

This article presents the principles and findings of developing a new participatory assessment of development (PADev) evaluation approach that was codesigned with Dutch nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and northern and southern research institutes over a period of 4 years in the context of rural development in Ghana and Burkina Faso. Although participatory approaches in development evaluations have become widely accepted since the 1990s, the PADev approach is different by taking the principles of holism and local knowledge as starting points for its methodological elaboration. The PADev approach is found to have an added value for assessing the differentiated effects of development interventions across different subgroups in a community through intersubjectivity. Moreover, if PADev is taken up by a multitude of stakeholders, including the intended beneficiaries of development interventions and development stakeholders, it can contribute to a process of local history writing, knowledge sharing, capacity development, and providing input into community action plans and the strategies of community-based organizations and NGOs.

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.