title: Barriers to collaborative forest management and implications for building the resilience of forest-dependent communities in the Ashanti region of Ghana.
abstract: Community resilience, the capacity of a community to adapt to change in ways that result in positive impacts on its well-being, is increasingly used as a framework for understanding and enhancing the sustainability of forest-dependent communities as social-ecological systems. However, studies linking community resilience to the implementation of forest management programs are limited. This study uses community resilience literature and analyzes data collected from interviews to study barriers of forest-dependent communities of collaborative forest management (CFM) in two forest-dependent communities in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Analysis revealed the barriers in community response to CFM programs in these two communities comprise institutional shortfalls in the design and implementation of the CFM program that have constrained the incentives, capacity and opportunities for communities to successfully adapt to the program. The paper offers recommendations on how the CFM program can contribute to building the resilience of communities in managing their forests. The first is to build institutional capacity of communities to play an active role in forest governance, and the second is the prioritization of well-being and livelihood enhancement as forest management goals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Forestry, Southern Illinois University, 1205 Lincoln Drive, Mail Code 4411, Carbondale, IL 62901, USA. Electronic address: k.akamani@siu.edu.
authors.forename: Kofi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Akamani
authors.affiliation: Department of Conservation Social Sciences, University of Idaho, P.O. Box 441139, Moscow, ID 83844-1139, USA.
authors.forename: Patrick Impero
authors.initials: PI
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.affiliation: Forest Ecosystems and Society, College of Forestry, Oregon State University, 321 Richardson Hall, Corvallis, OR 92331, USA.
authors.forename: Troy Elizabeth
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Hall
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D017753:Ecosystem; D065928:Forests; D005869:Ghana; D006801:Humans; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D040841:Resource Allocation
keywords: Adaptive governance; Agroforestry; Co-management; Community resilience; Social–ecological system