ghana climate change vulnerability and adaptation assessment

extreme, fire is essential in fire-dependent ecosystems where species have evolved to withstand burning and tofacilitate fire spread. The northern Savanna Zone in is such an ecosystem. Fire-sensitive ecosystems have evolvedwithout fire as a significant process but humans have made them vulnerable to wildfire. Many of the deciduousforests would be fire-sensitive. Fire-influenced ecosystems generally are adjacent to fire-dependent vegetationwhere wildfires originate and spread; this type characterizes much of the forest-savanna transition. The responseto fire in fire-influenced ecosystems is variable and often subtle. Government policy since the colonial era hasbeen to reduce the occurrence of wildfire as much as possible by restricting its use and limited attempts tosuppress wildfires (Laris and Wardell 2006). Such policies ignore the ecological role of fire as well as thetraditional use of fire by agriculturalists, pastoralists, and hunters. There are few data on fire occurrence in Ghanabut anecdotal evidence suggests that fires are common in the Northern Savanna zone, almost annual events.Wildfires are not as widespread in the forests regions, yet there may be a wildfire every year in many districts(Appiah, Damnyag et al. 2010) where the most common ignitions were caused by slash and burn land preparationfollowed by fires set by hunters.Wildfires and biomass burning are a significant component of Ghana’s GHG emissions. The draft NationalWildfire Policy (as of 2006) seeks to overcome past policy limitations (unclear authorities, lack of deterrents,disregard of traditional practices and no involvement of traditional authorities in policy formulation orimplementation). Nevertheless, the draft policy is overly focused on fire prevention and suppression, ignoring therole of fire as an ecological agent and a traditional management tool.FISHERY RESOURCES AND OVERFISHINGThe fishing industry in Ghana is based primarily on a large, marine fishery, and to a lesser but important extent,on inland or freshwater fisheries and aquaculture. Fish make up about 40-60 percent of the protein in theGhanaian diet (Finegold et al., 2010). Much (about 42 percent) of the population lives