Poverty Dimensions of Public Governance and Forest Management ...

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1. Executive Summary
This is a scoping study to develop a research project on innovative strategies for natural resource
management at the FAI in Ghana. This research stands to make a significant contribution to the
realisation of the FAI Purpose, through improved understanding of the social and economic
influences which have led to existing policies, and the decision-making processes which need to
be taken into account in advancing environmental policy. The focus is socio-political, not
technological. The first two of the Purpose-level OVIs have been achieved; the third is being
addressed at a level appropriate to a scoping study.
Local government decentralisation is widely anticipated to improve environmental management
by bringing decision making closer to the resource users, but there is little evidence from the
Ghana case that this is actually occurring. Here, the dominant process has been to give new life to
the principles of cultural and technological modernisation which have guided policy formulation
since Independence. This has been sustained in a number of ways. The quality of environmental
information available to local decision-makers is poor, and this has allowed externally-generated
narratives to dominate the policy process. Environmental discourse has been manipulated by
certain groups to pursue their interests against those with competing claims over natural
resources. In addition, external interventions often rest on questionable assumptions (for example,
the search for technologies to increase returns to unit area where labour and capital, not land, are
in fact the limiting factors), and these have reinforced the centrist approach. Consultative
processes which appear exemplary in terms of their adherence to principles of multi-stakeholder
participation have tended, in the event, to exacerbate this bias. Finally, the fact that, in significant
areas, authority over the environment has been withheld from the local level disenfranchises the
democratic fora, and encourages the pursuit of environmental interests through emblematic
means.
What needs to be done to re-orient environmental decision making? Five priority areas of
research enquiry are identified. These concern:
1. The types of information system required for District Assemblies to better understand the
social and economic processes which lead to alternative livelihood strategies, including the
pressures of different forms of production on fallow lands.
2. The innovative institutional arrangements which are arising within localities, which may
provide a vehicle to manage conflicts over natural resources.
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