Non-compliance is a major urban planning challenge in Ghana. Based on indepth interviews with key stakeholders, the paper examines the complex and multifaceted factors that contribute to low or non-compliance with building permit regulations and planning standards in Accra and its environs. The paper uses the interviews to assess potential responses to the problem of non-compliance and its negative impacts. In doing so the paper contributes to wider knowledge and debate about the challenges of planning enforcement in contexts where regulatory power is weak and variable. Suggestions are made for overcoming barriers to planning compliance in the Accra-Tema city-region. It is hoped that such an examination of the issues from multiple stakeholders' perspectives will improve the knowledge of the dynamics of non-compliance so as to initiate effective planning strategies to address the problem. The paper makes specific recommendations to improve planning practices in the AccraTema city-region.

Understanding complexity suggests that some problems are more complex than others and defy conventional solutions. These wicked problems will not be solved by the same tools and processes that are complicit in creating them. Neither will they be resolved by approaches short on explicating the complex interconnections of the multiple causes, consequences, and cross-scale actors of the problem. Climate change is one such wicked problem confronting water management in Ghana with a dilemma. The physical consequences of climate change on Ghana's water resources are progressively worsening. At the same time, existing institutional arrangements demonstrate weak capacities to tackle climate change-related complexities in water management. Therefore, it warrants a dynamic approach imbued with complex and adaptive systems thinking, which also capitalizes on instrumental gains from prior existing institutions. Adaptive Co-Management offers such an opportunity for Ghana to adapt its water management system to climate change.

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