RAINS

Natural Resource Management

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Promoting Natural Resource Management

Communities in Northern Ghana house mostly self sufficient farmers who are dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods. Hence, their families’ livelihoods are vulnerable to many factors including changing weather patterns, and access to and use of natural resources. Changes to this balance cause families to fall in and out of poverty, and when household poverty increases children are withdrawn from school and some migrate to the South to become porters. These realities drew us into work on natural resource management in 2004.

Achievements since the start of this work include:

In 2005 we facilitated discussions with traditional leaders on finding local and traditional approaches to conserving and maintaining the integrity of the environment, as well as ensuring that local people are actively involved on matters affecting ownership of land, other natural resources and their utilisation.
In 2008, faced with the challenges of the phenomenal demand by multinationals for huge tracts of lands for bio-fuel production, we successfully worked with a community to reverse the use of land for bio-fuel production. This case received international attention when it was filmed by ActionAid with the support of RAINS.

Our work on such issues has drawn us into alliances with the African Biodiversity Network and other networks who are concerned with climate change and the loss of biodiversity. With their support we have recently organised workshops for the West Africa sub region and at national level on climate change, community resilience, bio-safety and GMOs.

One of the biggest issues in the North is that of land grabbing which has become widespread in many districts since 2007. Traditional leaders are disposing of land by selling or leasing it to companies who most often use it to produce bio-fuel. Consequently, local people can no longer use such lands or natural resources such as the Shea tree. They are forced to move further away to farm, to find wood for cooking and water for drinking. At present farmers are not organised to take action and negotiate protection of their rights to land and natural resources with local authorities including chiefs.

Furthermore, genetically modified crops are slowly being introduced into the country. There are indications that these will be replacing indigenous seeds which will threaten seed diversity and increase the dependency of farmers on seed companies. Over the long term such changes will reduce the ability of hitherto self sufficient farmers to feed themselves and the implication for food security will be huge.

Within 2010-2013 RAINS will facilitate and support discussions among farmers in communities threatened by land grabbers. Engage and support other networks (and the media) who are working in Northern Ghana on the same issue. Complete research studies on the phenomena and extent of land grabbing and on native seeds (as well as a scoping study concerning GMOs in Ghana). We will organise a workshop in Accra on the negative aspects of the current bio-safety bill, and take steps to make parliamentarians aware of the issues.

The expected outcome from this work is that by 2013 communities will be negotiating and engaging local authorities to protect their use of land and natural resources and the environment

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