ghana climate change vulnerability and adaptation assessment

the products for commercial use (Marfo, Halladay et al. 2010). Inn practice, these rules and their selective or lowenforcement encouragee farmers to remove trees toavoid damage or by sale tochainsaw operators to gain somefinancial return (Hansenn and Treue 2008; Hansen, Lund et al. 2009). Discussion of other issues such as benefitsharing that provides perverse incentives to forest management by farmers and forest fringe communities aredeferred tothe section on REDD+.The foregoing discussion of deforestation and degradation of Ghana's forest estate begs the question ofwhy doesit continueand who benefits from the status quo? The answer from several authors who have studied thesematters in greater depthsuggests thatt we look at the political economy of timber in Ghana (Asante 2005; Hansenand Treuee 2008; Appiah, Blay et al. 2009; Hansen, Lund et al. 2009; Hansen 2011). The encapsulatationof theseanalyses (Hansen et al. 2009; Figure 6.4) suggested that it beginss with the failure of policies to protect andconserve the forests, the dominance of executive and bureaucratic actors whopursue revenue generationn fromthe forest estate, and external factors such as global demand for r the products of resource extraction and service ofnational debt (Asante 2005). This constellation of underlying drivers providess the context for urban elites whofinance the illegal loggers and an industrial timber industry focused on exportt who maintainn pressure forsupportinga forest regime that effectively subsidizes log prices (Hansen, Lund et al. 2009). Because of a biasedbenefit-sharing arrangement, the small portion of forest fees that are channeled back to local government andcustomaryauthorities are used for recurring expenses or semi-private purposes (Hansen, Lund et al. 2009; Hansen2011).Figure 6.4 The political timberr economy of GhanaHorizontal straight arrows signify thesequence of governance effects that lead to deforestation and forestdegradation while curved arrows signify associated, unofficial cash flows. Source: (Hansen, Lund et al. 2009)WILDFIREThe complex role that wildfire plays in shaping ecosystems can be described in terms of four vegetationresponses: fire-dependent, fire-sensitive, fire-independent, and fire-influenced. Fire is largely absent fromfire-independent ecosystems such as the evergreen rainforest in Ghana where conditions are wet burn. At the other104 GHANA CLIMATE CHANGE VULNERABILITY AND ADAPTATION ASSESSMENT