Poverty Dimensions of Public Governance and Forest Management ...

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6. Environmental Assessment
6.1 What significant environmental impacts resulted from the research activities
(both positive and negative)?
# This is a scoping study, which sought to develop new knowledge about the environment and
its exploitation, and thus its impacts are yet to be felt.
6.2 What will be the potentially significant environmental impacts (both positive and
negative) of widespread dissemination and application of research findings?
# The full study which is proposed should improve the quality of environmental management in
the Brong Ahafo in a number of ways:
" By improving the quality of environmental information available to decision-makers
(including through the use of new technologies, such as remote censing);
" By bringing environmental decision making more firmly within the democratic process;
" By reducing conflicts between resource users, and opening up democratic channels for
their resolution;
" By giving more voice to the poor and marginal (including poor women and migrants);
" By better adapting natural resource research to actual on-farm constraints;
" By improving the information base on controversial aspects of natural resource policy
(such as tree plantation development).
To the extent that there are potential negative impacts, these relate largely to the danger of
stimulating inappropriate responses from local authorities, which seek to give proof of their
environmental concerns. The long-term aim of the project, however, is to give environmental
decision-making a more rational basis, and hence to counter such ‘gesture politics’.
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