Actor Perceptions of the Governance Framework and Non-Carbon Benefits from the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Program: An Extended Q-Study of the Juabuso-Bia Hotspot Intervention Area

The expansion of cocoa farms is a major driver of deforestation and emissions in Ghana's high forest zone. The Ghana Cocoa Forest Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Program (REDD+) was launched as the world's first commodity-based initiative to address emissions from deforestation caused by cocoa production and generate non-carbon benefits. Hotspot Intervention Areas were established to implement the Ghana Cocoa REDD+ program. This study combines Q-methodology with focus group discussions and interviews to assess stakeholder perceptions in the Juabuso-Bia cocoa landscape regarding the capacity of the Hotspot Intervention Area to facilitate the generation of governance and economic non-carbon benefits to sustain emission reductions. We found that introducing the Hotspot Intervention Area has re-centralized landscape governance, which, coupled with weak collaboration among stakeholders, has led to poor generation of non-carbon benefits. Furthermore, efforts to include women in the leadership structure of the Hotspot Intervention Area can be described as tokenism, and little has been done to improve land and tree tenure for vulnerable groups. This, combined with the low adoption of climate-smart cocoa practices, is likely to negatively affect the generation of economic non-carbon benefits. To overcome these challenges, we recommend reforming the Hotspot Intervention Area, bolstering community-level sensitization, improving access to decision-making spaces that will enhance the participation of women and minority groups in landscape governance, and improving farmers' tenure security through a registration scheme for land and trees. These recommendations can ensure the efficient generation of non-carbon benefits, which are key to the success of REDD+.

Who Gets to Adopt? Contested Values Constrain Just Transitions to Agroforestry

Agroforestry is often promoted as a multi-benefit solution to increasing the resilience of agricultural landscapes. Yet, there are many obstacles to transitioning agricultural production systems to agroforestry. Research on agroforestry transitions often focuses on why farmers and land managers chose to adopt this type of stewardship, with less focus on the political context of practitioner decisions. We use the case study of agroforestry in Hawai‘i to explore how agroforestry transitions occur with particular attention to politics and power dynamics. Specifically, we ask, what factors drive and/or restrain transitions to agroforestry and who is able to participate. We interviewed 38 agroforestry practitioners in Hawai‘i and analyzed the data using constructivist grounded theory. We then held a focus group discussion with interview participants to share results and discuss solutions. Practitioners primarily chose agroforestry intentionally for non-economic and values-based reasons, rather than as a means to production or economic goals. Agroforestry practitioners face a similar suite of structural obstacles as other agricultural producers, including access to land, labor, and capital and ecological obstacles like invasive species and climate change. However, the conflict in values between practitioners and dominant institutions manifests as four additional dimensions of obstacles constraining agroforestry transitions: systems for accessing land, capital, and markets favor short-term production and economic value; Indigenous and local knowledge is not adequately valued; regulatory, funding, and other support institutions are siloed; and not enough appropriate information is accessible. Who is able to practice despite these obstacles is tightly linked with people's ability to access off-site resources that are inequitably distributed. Our case study highlights three key points with important implications for realizing just agroforestry transitions: (1) practitioners transition to agroforestry to restore ecosystems and reclaim sovereignty, not just for the direct benefits; (2) a major constraint to agroforestry transitions is that the term agroforestry is both unifying and exclusionary; (3) structural change is needed for agroforestry transitions to be just. We discuss potential solutions in the context of Hawai‘i and provide transferrable principles and actionable strategies for achieving equity in agroforestry transitions. We also demonstrate a transferrable approach for action-oriented, interdisciplinary research in support of just agroforestry transitions.