Understanding climate resilience in Ghanaian cocoa communities – Advancing a biocultural perspective

M Hirons,E Boyd,C Mcdermott,R Asare,A Morel,J Mason,Y Malhi,K Norris

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.08.010

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the ongoing conceptual development and practical pursuit of resilience, the ability to absorb and respond to shocks, in an agricultural and climate change context. It builds on work that aims to dissolve the nature-society dualism and naturalisation of power relations inherent in systems thinking by developing and extending a framework originally conceived to integrate research on biological and cultural diversity. The resultant ‘biocultural’ framework examines livelihood practices, institutions, knowledge and beliefs and is applied to a case study of cocoa communities in Ghana's Central Region. Drawing on data collected over three years spanning an El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) related drought event, the analysis demonstrates the utility of an expanded conception of resilience that links livelihood practices, which define the impact and response to droughts, with the constituent knowledge, institutions and beliefs that shape those practices. The study focuses on two key factors that underpin cocoa farmers' resilience to climate shocks: access to wetlands and access to credit. We argue that particular characteristics of livelihood practices, knowledge, belief and institutions, and their interactions, can be both resilience enhancing and undermining, when viewed at different spatial, temporal and social scales. Although such contradictions present challenges to policy-makers engaging with climate resilience, the analysis provides a clearer diagnoses of key challenges to the resilience of agricultural systems and insights into where policy interventions might be most effective.

Highlights

Climate change poses a significant threat to tropical agriculture and the millions of livelihoods that depend on it
Despite several decades of progress in these fields, there is still a significant research need in terms of developing insights into the factors that contribute to and undermine resilience that move beyond the biophysical, knowledge and financial constraints on agricultural production and address underlying political, social and psychological issues (Shackleton et al, 2015)
This study adopted a biocultural lens to interrogate the role of livelihood practices, knowledge, belief and institutions in shaping the climate resilience of Ghana's cocoa sector

Summary

Introduction

Climate change poses a significant threat to tropical agriculture and the millions of livelihoods that depend on it. This paper aims to develop deeper understandings of resilience to climate change in African agricultural communities by examining the case of Ghana's cocoa sector To achieve this aim, the paper builds on the ‘biocultural’ framework developed by Pretty et al (2009) and develops an approach to understanding resilience which incorporates livelihood practices, knowledge, beliefs and institutions. The paper builds on the ‘biocultural’ framework developed by Pretty et al (2009) and develops an approach to understanding resilience which incorporates livelihood practices, knowledge, beliefs and institutions This approach is outlined, but the motivation for developing it is rooted in an intentional effort to build on existing work and capitalise on the ability of the concept to open up meeting points between social and natural sciences (Strunz, 2012), while simultaneously addressing long-discussed concerns regarding the weakness of some approaches to resilience with reference to questions of politics and culture (Arora-Jonsson, 2016; Cote and Nightingale, 2012; Kull and Rangan, 2016; Peterson, 2000)

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