Workshop to Validate the Priority Climate Action Plan in Juabeso-Bia and Sefwi-Wiawso landscape

Workshop to Validate the Priority Climate Action Plan in Juabeso-Bia and Sefwi-Wiawso landscape

Ghana - 29 March, 2021

The Juabeso-Bia and Sefwi-Wiawso Landscape (JBSW) in the Western North Region of Ghana is located in the High Forest Zone and has considerable levels of biodiversity. However, the landscape faces the threats of deforestation and forest degradation, which compromise the livelihoods of forest adjacent communities and the general population.

Tropenbos Ghana under the Mobilising More for Climate (MoMo4C) programme is using an integrated business approach to tackle these threats. Through its research findings, the programme has identified the key landscape challenges. These include land-use practices that are mostly characterized by unstainable farming techniques, agricultural expansion into protected areas, urbanization over-reliance on cocoa production as the only source of income and climate change adversely affecting productivity and socio-economic wellbeing.

The drivers of deforestation and forest degradation include population growth; poverty; lack of employment opportunities; high demand for timber, cash crops and food crops; corruption; inadequate law enforcement; scarcity of land for agriculture; high demand for firewood and charcoal; and a decline in cocoa yield due to the lack of shade.

Under the MoMo4C programme there are ongoing processes to facilitate the development of innovative green business and finance models. These will build on the commitments of landscape stakeholders to reduce deforestation and improve cocoa yields and livelihoods, paying particular attention to women and young Ghanaian entrepreneurs. This is expected to reduce climate vulnerability associated with the landscape and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The models will function as examples for other landscapes where the production of agro-commodities and forest encroachment have damaging effects on fragile forest ecosystems.

Based on the above, a Priority Climate Action Plan (PCAP) has been developed as part of the MoMo4C programme; it outlines the key landscape challenges and possible climate-smart solutions to address them. The action plan was developed through a participatory process that involved an existing multi-stakeholder platform and other relevant stakeholders.

In the process of strengthening the multi-stakeholder platform and soliciting ideas for the development of an action plan, a one-day validation workshop was held at Sefwi-Wiawso on 10 March 2021. Landscape-level stakeholders discussed possible climate-smart solutions based on thematic issues: agriculture/forestry, sustainable value chains/productions, and sustainable energy use and efficiency.

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 It is anticipated that the MoMo4C financing models will focus on the solutions discussed by the multi-stakeholder platform to tackle the ever-growing challenges of climate change in the landscape.