Growing Forest Partnerships in Ghana: a catalytic process or an unnecessary scheme?

Growing Forest Partnerships (GFP) is a forest sector initiative that has been embraced by a wide range of stakeholders in Ghana, particularly at the policymaking level. These stakeholders include staff of the Forestry Commission, members of community-based organisations and forest fringe communities.

Since its launch in 2009, GFP has aimed to play a catalytic role in forest policy-making by encouraging enhanced interactions among the different stakeholders. One way in which it has done this is by initiating a series of brainstorming sessions on the core issues behind forest governance in Ghana. The result was a country-led identification of seven priority areas for intervention: participatory governance, capacity building, ownership and access, restoration of forest resources, alternative livelihoods, research and technology, and benefit sharing.

Officials of the Forestry Commission (FC) recognise that GFP has facilitated the strengthening of partnerships for sustainable forest management by fostering effective dialogues between government, civil society and the private sector, and between all of these groups and community stakeholders. Others, mainly representatives of civil society organisations (CSOs), however, have doubts about the purpose and aims of the initiative.

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The ‘Forest voices’ series aims, through the work of local journalists, to provide insight into the forestry context in each of these countries and illustrate how locally controlled forestry and partnerships are working in practice on the ground.