Contextualizing local landscape initiatives in global change: a scenario study for the high forest zone, Ghana

Abstract

Integrated landscape management (ILM) has received increased interest to reconcile multiple conflicting demands on a landscape scale. ILM aims at addressing major interconnected global challenges, such as poverty, food security, deforestation, and climate change. A principal element of ILM is the consideration of multiple scales, harmonizing local-level needs and ambitions with those that derive from outside the landscape. ILM initiatives are most often initiated by local actors focusing on local priorities, thereby insufficiently realizing that the landscape is embedded in a wider macroeconomic and societal context. We contextualize a landscape initiative located in the high forest zone of southern Ghana, focusing on global socioeconomic and political developments that are expected to have an influence on the region. We built two “sustainability” scenarios for the period between 2015 and 2030, reflecting the demands and ambitions of local stakeholders (bottom-up) and of global environmental policy (top-down) for the region. We find that global climate and cocoa production priorities could induce synergies between food production, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation at the scale of the case study region but could come at the cost of mixed forest systems that play an important role in livelihoods on the landscape scale. Land change scenarios can play a critical role in assessing and visualizing such interactions and provide a platform for discussion and negotiation on how to integrate different objectives in the design of landscape initiatives.

Effects of Monocropping on Land Cover Transitions in the Wet Evergreen Agro-Ecological Zone of Ghana

“…However, the 2020 landscape had an additional class of rubber. The identified classes are similar to several other studies on the south-western side of Ghana [53][54][55]. The studies have shown increasing cases of rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) plantation establishments since 1962 to present by companies such as Ghana Rubber Estate Limited (GREL) in the rainforest zones of the Western Region [56] and Plantation Socfinaf Ghana (PSG) since 2012 in the Subri forest reserve part of the study area [57].…”

Accounting for land use changes beyond the farm-level in sustainability assessments: The impact of cocoa production

“…We used a land cover map of the HFZ of Ghana for the year 2015 (Wolff et al, 2020). This map reported nine land use classes: built-up areas, water bodies, mining, rubber plantations, closed forest, open forest, cocoa, mixed forest with agriculture, and agriculture with sparse tree cover (Fig.…”

The Role of Different Types of Actors In The Future of Sustainable Agriculture In a Dutch Peri-urban Area

“…Urban food strategies as a new governance approach (Doernberg et al 2019) might help overcome the policy incoherence between food, agriculture, and environmental policy (Galli et al 2020). This requires knowledge sharing between the different actors involved (Schaller et al 2018) and alignment of local and larger-scale targets (Wolff et al 2020). Such a food strategy might include support for local food chains that support economic farm resilience, cascade into the uptake of other measures that target sustainability, and support recreation.…”