Vulnerability of Ghanaian women cocoa farmers to climate change: a typology

Abstract

Climate change, increasingly recognized as a hurdle to achieving sustainable development goals, has already begun impacting the lives and livelihoods of people around the world, including on the African continent. Vulnerability is a concept often employed in the context of climate change to identify risks and develop policy and adaptation measures that address current and projected impacts. However, it is situated in a broader social context, driven by factors such as land tenure and access, livelihood diversification, and empowerment, which single out historically marginalized groups like women. This paper applies a vulnerability framework to a case study of cocoa farming in the Central Region of Ghana, depicting not only the variety of factors contributing to climate change vulnerability but also different narratives on vulnerability that emerge based on a woman’s relation to cocoa production itself. The paper conveys how homogeneous representations of women farmers and the technical focus of climate-orientated policy interventions may threaten to further marginalize the most vulnerable and exacerbate existing inequalities. This has implications for both climate change policy design and implementation, as well as the broader social development agenda that has bearing on vulnerability.

Keywords:

• gender
• vulnerability
• Africa
• agriculture
• climate change

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the participants for their generosity in sharing their experiences and knowledge. They also thank all those who helped facilitate the research during fieldwork, especially Anne Adusei, Michael Adu-Sasu, Prosper Kapoti, and Rebecca Asare. They also appreciate insightful discussions with other members of the ECOLIMITS research team and members of the ecosystem governance group at the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), University of Oxford.

Disclosure statement

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

ORCID

Rachel Friedman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9437-9239

Emily Boyd http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1643-9718

Notes

1 Entitlements refer to access to different types of assets or capital, such as land, credit, and productive resources and can include capabilities like literacy and education levels (Adger, 2006).

2 In this context, agency includes the ability to conceptualize alternate futures, and to reflect on past and present circumstances and future manoeuvrability (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998).

3 The term ‘stool’ in Ghana refers to the chiefly office (Sara, 2004). The Stools have considerable influence over cocoa land (i.e. it is very difficult to change cocoa to something else without permission).

4 Cocoa usually grows for 25–40 years, which corresponds to climatic (30 years) time-scales.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded through the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme (Project Code NE/K010379-1) funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Understanding the Impacts of the Current El Niño Event programme (Project Code: NE/P00394X/1) funded by the DFID and NERC, and a Santander Academic Travel Award through the University of Oxford.