Retooling incentive mechanisms for effective smallholder tree growers’ contributions to global landscape restoration

ABSTRACT

Amid the global tree-planting rush to restore degraded landscapes, this study examined how service providers organise incentives for smallholder forest plantations in rural Ghana. Current incentives push farmers to plant trees without adequate mechanisms for ensuring they benefit over time. This enables timber merchants to exploit many tree growers, discouraging most farmers from participating in restoration activities. While some tree growers innovate, converting their plantations into a sustainable charcoal system, land tenure insecurity and poor access to finance remain barriers policymakers, governments, and development practitioners must overcome to reinforce smallholders’ contributions and ability to benefit from landscape restoration perennially.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• integrated land use
• landscape governance
• forestry extension
• sub-Saharan Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 USD 1 = GHS 7.05221 as of 7 November 2021.

2 In practice, 4–5 poles equal one cubic metre

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Directorate-General for International Cooperation, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Notes on contributors

Eric Mensah Kumeh

Eric Mensah Kumeh is a Postdoctoral Research at the Natural Resources Institute Finland. His research interests are land rights, bioeconomy, forest landscape restoration, cocoa, and international forest politics.

Boateng Kyereh

Boateng Kyereh is an Associate Professor at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He focuses on forest ecology, forest governance, and restoration.

Joseph Asante

Joseph Asante is a doctoral researcher at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. His interests are community resource governance, mining, landscape restoration, and sustainable charcoal production.

Godfred Ohene-Gyan

Godfrey Ohene-Gyan is the manager of collaborative resources management at the Resource Management Support Centre, Forestry Commission. His work focuses on effective community involvement in forest resource planning and governance.

Valerie Fummey Nassah

Valerie Fummey Nassah is Manager of the Plantations Unit, Resource Management Support Centre. Her interests lie in forest landscape restoration policy and praxis and forest governance.

Alexander Asare

Alexander Asare is a consultant and a pioneer of collaborative resource management in Ghana.

Paul P. Bosu

Paul P. Bosu is the Deputy Director-General of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ghana.

Samuel Kwabena Nketiah

Samuel Kwabena Nketiah is a consultant with extensive experience in forest governance, landscape restoration and sustainable charcoal production and trade.