Assessing social equity in farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) interventions: Findings from Ghana

TY - JOUR

T1 - Assessing social equity in farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) interventions: Findings from Ghana

AU - Kandel, Matt

AU - Agaba, Genevieve

AU - Alare, Rahinatu

AU - Addoah, Thomas

AU - Schreckenberg, Kate

N1 - Funding Information: We thank three anonymous reviewers, an Associate Editor, Mar-lène Elias, and Carolin Dieterle for their very helpful comments and suggestions at different stages of this article. We are also grateful to the editors of this special issue for inviting us to contribute this article. We thank Chengxiu Li and Michael Batame for their support in developing the map depicting our study area. Finally, we extend our deepest gratitude to the residents of northeastern Ghana who supported this study in their capacity as research participants. This work was funded through the “Building REsearch Capacity for sustainable water and food security In drylands of sub-saharan Africa” (BRECcIA) which is supported by UK Research and Innovation as part of the Global Challenges Research Fund, grant number NE/P021093/1. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 University of Wisconsin Press. All rights reserved. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/3

Y1 - 2021/3

N2 - Achieving social equity in land and forest restoration is a key objective of major international frameworks and commitments, including the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Meeting this objective requires consideration of key governance questions such as who makes decisions about what is restored, where, and how? And how do factors specific to local contexts influence which decisions are made, and, in turn, the distribution of benefits? Despite the demonstrated importance of social equity on project outcomes in many natural resource-based fields, there have to date been no assessments of social equity of farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR), an approach used mainly for restoring degraded agricultural land. Drawing on findings from community-based fieldwork in 2019–2020 in northeastern Ghana, this paper aims to fill this void. We address the following question: How do historical, socio-ecological, and political processes condition prospects for social equity in FMNR interventions? Key findings were: 1) Preexisting hierarchies in authority, control, and access over land and trees shaped decision-making in project design and the potential distribution of benefits from FMNR 2) FMNR, when implemented on farmland, generally aligned with local agroecological practices; but, when implemented to restore communal lands, it created tensions with local perceptions of equity as well as traditional land and natural resource management practices, and 3) The FMNR project reflected the continuing salience of dominant political and environmental discourses, which carry implications for restoring landscapes with FMNR. To support practitioners, we provide several recommendations for strengthening social equity of FMNR project designs.

AB - Achieving social equity in land and forest restoration is a key objective of major international frameworks and commitments, including the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Meeting this objective requires consideration of key governance questions such as who makes decisions about what is restored, where, and how? And how do factors specific to local contexts influence which decisions are made, and, in turn, the distribution of benefits? Despite the demonstrated importance of social equity on project outcomes in many natural resource-based fields, there have to date been no assessments of social equity of farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR), an approach used mainly for restoring degraded agricultural land. Drawing on findings from community-based fieldwork in 2019–2020 in northeastern Ghana, this paper aims to fill this void. We address the following question: How do historical, socio-ecological, and political processes condition prospects for social equity in FMNR interventions? Key findings were: 1) Preexisting hierarchies in authority, control, and access over land and trees shaped decision-making in project design and the potential distribution of benefits from FMNR 2) FMNR, when implemented on farmland, generally aligned with local agroecological practices; but, when implemented to restore communal lands, it created tensions with local perceptions of equity as well as traditional land and natural resource management practices, and 3) The FMNR project reflected the continuing salience of dominant political and environmental discourses, which carry implications for restoring landscapes with FMNR. To support practitioners, we provide several recommendations for strengthening social equity of FMNR project designs.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108720325&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3368/er.39.1-2.64

DO - 10.3368/er.39.1-2.64

M3 - Article

SN - 1522-4740

VL - 39

SP - 64

EP - 76

JO - Ecological Restoration

JF - Ecological Restoration

IS - 1-2

M1 - 793661

ER -