Local peoples’ perception of conflict causes, effects and coping strategies across forest regimes in Ghana: implication for micro-level governance

Conflicts over the use, control and management of forest and tree resources are prevalent in the forested landscape of Ghana. These conflicts undermine sustainable forest management as they destroy the resource base, threaten food security and thwart efforts towards poverty alleviation especially in forest fringe communities. This study explored forest and tree resources conflicts in terms of causes, effects and coping strategies across the protection, production and plantation regimes in the Tano-Offin Forest Reserve from local people’s perspectives and ascertain the implication for micro-level governance. The study is based on document analysis, community meetings, semi-structured questionnaire survey among 212 inhabitants of Chirayaso and Kunsu Nyamebekyere No. 3, and 137 inhabitants out of the 212 respondents in the same villages bordering the plantation and production regimes respectively in the Tano-Offin Forest Reserve. With respect to the protection regime, the survey was conducted among 119 inhabitants living in the middle of a globally significant biodiversity area (GSBA). The findings revealed that the three regimes do have diverse actors governed by different laws and strategies, however whilst some actors in the plantations and production regimes do benefit from forest resources, none of these are experienced by inhabitants in and around the protection regime. Secondly, the study revealed that local people do indeed access forest resources to meet their subsistence and commercial needs however most of these resources are done illegally against the prevailing laws. Furthermore, the application of Pareto analysis identified seven key factors that cause forest conflicts at the microlevel in terms of their frequency of occurrence which calls for policy and research consideration. Lastly, several coping strategies were seen to be employed to minimise conflict incidences. However effectiveness was attributed to the actions and inactions of the conflict parties, the conflict management third parties as well as the intensity of the conflict. The paper therefore concludes with recommendations ranging from exploring quality tools to unearth natural resources conflict causes to ensuring equitable benefit sharing to include inhabitants at the protection regime.