Towards a creative peoples’ diagnostics in Ghana

Over the last twenty years, forestry in Ghana has gone through many changes and although considerable successes have been made, many challenges exist. The changes span from review processes leading to the formulation of the 1994 Forest and Wildlife Policy  (FWP) and its attendant legislations; to the processes leading up to the initialling of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) between Government of Ghana and the European Union and the development of the multi-donor support Natural Resource and Environment Governance (NREG) targets.

These processes have marked significant shifts in the partnerships of forest stakeholders, 
notably between government and civil society, within civil society groupings, across different government sectors, between government and the private sector; and importantly interactions with community stakeholders. However issues of resource sustainability, fair access to the resource, fair benefits sharing of resource revenues and participatory sector governance remain grave.

It has been recognised that community rights must be made central to any discourse and actions in the forest sector making a forest policy and legislative reform imperative; a position which is reflected in current discussions in the sector. Government, CSOs and the private sector are
engaged through different platforms and processes to address forest sector challenges.