DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/y2ez-z857
Biographical Information // Informations biographiques
George Ortsin is the Country Program Coordinator of the UNDP Global Environment Facility Small Grants Program in Ghana. He has been involved in promoting traditional landscape management, documentation of best practices and innovative strategies, and building partnerships and networks to strengthen local and national capacities. He promotes biodiversity management within socio-ecological production landscapes, with the view to providing livelihoods to sustain the cultural values of the local communities within traditional landscapes.
Keywords
SDGs, Ghana, cultural landscapes, rural heritage
Abstract // Résumé
In response to Ghana’s obligations under the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Global Environmental Fund Small Grants Program (SGP) adopted a resilience approach to sustainability, focusing on how to build local capacity to deal with unexpected landscape change. This paper will: (1) share experience from Ghana in restoring landscapes for resilient livelihoods, (2) present methodologies on how rural landscapes can be managed to ensure a sustainable and resilient supply of essential ecosystem services, and (3) discuss the challenges that are associated with these approaches. The paper will also discuss how Ghana’s Weto and Black Volta socio-ecological production landscapes enhanced food security as a strategy, how good practices for restoring and enhancing the landscape have been demonstrated, and how cultural revival and revitalization of traditions has helped shape the landscape.
Recognizing the role that local people play as external drivers of ecosystem dynamics, this approach explored ways that rural communities can interact sustainably with ecosystems while maintaining their spiritual, cultural and economic connections to the landscapes they inhabit. Using seven principles of resilience, SGP and its partners undertook a wide range of project interventions in over one-hundred rural communities aimed at creating resilience practices to strengthen the well-being of these communities and support key ecosystem functions and biodiversity conservation within a 250,000 ha landscape. The interventions had many different aims, among them to: maintain, revitalize and rebuild socio-ecological production landscapes promote food security, encourage learning systems, promote broader participation and adoption, and promote polycentric governance systems. The case study also identifies paradigm shifts in landscape management based on building a community’s capacity to ensure resilience while harnessing ecosystem services through innovation, adaptation, and governance.
Bibliographic References // Références Bibliographiques
Brown, Jessica and Terence Hay-Edie (2014) Engaging Local Communities in Stewardship of World Heritage: A methodology based on the COMPACT experience, World Heritage Papers 40. Paris: UNESCO.
Brown, Jessica, Nora Mitchell, and Michael Beresford (eds) (2005) The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN, World Commission on Protected Areas.
Ortsin, George (2015) ‘Ecological and Socio-Cultural Resilience in Managing Traditional Sacred Landscapes in the Coastal Savannah Ecosystem of Ghana,’ in Ken Taylor, Archer St Clair and Nora J. Mitchell (eds) Conserving Cultural Landscapes: Challenges and New Directions, London and New York: Routledge, 2015, pp. 129-143.
Included in
Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis Commons, Environmental Design Commons, Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons, Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons
Panel 4 Paper 4.2: Resiliency of rural socio-ecological landscapes: Case study of the Black Volta and Weto Landscapes of Ghana
In response to Ghana’s obligations under the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Global Environmental Fund Small Grants Program (SGP) adopted a resilience approach to sustainability, focusing on how to build local capacity to deal with unexpected landscape change. This paper will: (1) share experience from Ghana in restoring landscapes for resilient livelihoods, (2) present methodologies on how rural landscapes can be managed to ensure a sustainable and resilient supply of essential ecosystem services, and (3) discuss the challenges that are associated with these approaches. The paper will also discuss how Ghana’s Weto and Black Volta socio-ecological production landscapes enhanced food security as a strategy, how good practices for restoring and enhancing the landscape have been demonstrated, and how cultural revival and revitalization of traditions has helped shape the landscape.
Recognizing the role that local people play as external drivers of ecosystem dynamics, this approach explored ways that rural communities can interact sustainably with ecosystems while maintaining their spiritual, cultural and economic connections to the landscapes they inhabit. Using seven principles of resilience, SGP and its partners undertook a wide range of project interventions in over one-hundred rural communities aimed at creating resilience practices to strengthen the well-being of these communities and support key ecosystem functions and biodiversity conservation within a 250,000 ha landscape. The interventions had many different aims, among them to: maintain, revitalize and rebuild socio-ecological production landscapes promote food security, encourage learning systems, promote broader participation and adoption, and promote polycentric governance systems. The case study also identifies paradigm shifts in landscape management based on building a community’s capacity to ensure resilience while harnessing ecosystem services through innovation, adaptation, and governance.