CHAPTER X

 

POPULATION GROWTH AND ECOLOGICAL DEGRADATION

IN NORTHERN GHANA:

The Complex Reality1

 

JACOB SONGSORE

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

As people struggle to improve their well-being, it is the environment that provides the materials and at the same time frustrates the effort. Reinforcing the interconnection between human aspiration and ecological integrity is the underlying theme of sustainable development. "Accumulat[ed] evidence from ecology, agronomy and hydrology indicates that sustained over-use of biological systems can set in motion changes that are self-reinforcing. Each stage of deterioration hastens the onset of the next."2 Every land area has a carrying capacity beyond which it cannot be utilized without causing damage, deterioration and decreased productivity. This long neglected ecological rule is suddenly dawning on humanity at the global, continental, national and regional levels.

Whereas the rich industrial North accounts for a mere 23 percent of the world’s people, its population earns 85 percent of the world’s income. "The strains of this level of economic activity are felt in the loss of forests and species, the pollution of rivers, lakes and oceans, the accumulation of greenhouse gases and the depletion of life-preserving ozone."3 It is therefore an undeniable fact that the rich minority threatens the wider ecological integrity of humanity’s existence. As one expert puts it:

 

From the point of view of a simple population head-count, China, India, Indonesia and Brazil might be regarded as jeopardizing the future of the Earth’s resources, but, using a resource demand index, this risk is more fairly placed at the door of the USA, Japan, Germany, the UK, Canada and Russia. In the case of Indonesia, the USA exceeds its resource demand by a factor of 50. It is not difficult to see where the population control effort should be applied! Sweden as a country with a mere 8.6 million people exceeds the resource demand of Bangladesh (116.4 million) by some 15 times.4

 

The poor 77 percent of the world’s people, like those in Northern Ghana, are also generally recognized as threatening the ecological integrity of their limited life spaces — albeit through sheer necessity rather than through excess. These are the so-called ‘dead-end’ societies for whom it is argued that little prospect exists to substantially improve the lives of more than a few people, granted today’s international configuration of power relations.5 Given this neo-Malthusian global environmentalist vision, it is not surprising that issues of environmental degradation have often been articulated too narrowly — indeed, mistakenly — in terms of the growing numbers of the poor. Hence narrow solutions are sought in terms of population control.6 This approach is also fast becoming a convenient ploy for some governments in Africa. Relishing their opportunity to retreat from the costly developmental role of the state, such governments substitute in its place the crude barbarism of unmitigated ‘free market’ forces. They hide behind arguments that blame peasant sexual proclivities as the cause of the developmental impasse. They deflect from the fact that environmental degradation is caused rather by failures of governance and by inadequate technological responses to the emerging challenges of industrial development. As I seek to demonstrate in this chapter, it is clear that ecological degradation is a more complex process than simply being an effect of Nature’s reaction to peasants’ over-breeding.

The object of this overview is to correct common misperceptions of the relation between population growth and ecological degradation in Northern Ghana. The future of our people and of our many societies comprising one nation depends partly on realizing that ecological degradation processes in Northern Ghana are as much socially and politically determined as they are physically and geographically. These ecological changes do not result from growth in population alone, even though population is an important element. Spelling out the complexity of these processes is necessary in order to map out a viable development strategy that satisfies the immediate aspirations of our people for economic development whilst maintaining development opportunities for future generations. This chapter presents: (a) an ecological model of the complex relationships between population, technology, culture and the environment as an organizing framework; (b) a brief discussion of the impact of the technology of production, market forces and the role of the state in the ecological degradation process; (c) the processes of agro-ecological change under demographic pressure; (d) an analysis of agro-ecological regimes that have evolved under the impact of population growth; and (e) some suggestions for strategizing to support sustainable national development.

The geographical focus of this discussion is the whole of Northern Ghana, which comprises the Upper West, Upper East and Northern Administrative Regions of Ghana, Fig.1 on the next page. It has a land area of 98,000 square kilometers which is about 41 percent of the total land area of Ghana. By contrast, its share of the total population is less than 20 percent. It lies within the rather fragile Guinea Savannah agro-ecological zone, except in the extreme north-eastern corner where the even more fragile Sudan Savannah takes over as the dominant bio-climatic type. Rainfall is the major climatic element that has a strong influence upon animal and plant life, hence upon the cycle of agricultural activity because of its seasonality and variability from year to year. These uncertain climatic conditions get worse towards the extreme northern frontier with Sahelian Burkina Faso.

The economic base of the area hinges on smallholder agriculture with over 80 percent of the population depending on agriculture for their livelihood. The overall absence of modern industry in Northern Ghana is glaring. Currently this region contributes a mere 1.3 percent of the total number of Ghana’s industrial establishments, 0.3 percent of total value added, and another mere 0.7 percent of total number of persons employed in industries staffing 30 or more people. Together with the low levels of urbanization in the Upper West (8.5 percent), the Upper East (10.8 percent) and the Northern Region (24.7 percent) this simply emphasizes the region’s rurality.7 In 1988 there were only 45 bank offices, which amounted to a mere 8.6 percent of the country’s bank offices. At maximum the ratio of inhabitants to banking outlets reaches over 1:58,000 with areas of 5,300 square km. This very low bank density seems to be one reason why the entire North accounts for only 3.0 percent of all formal sector credit and 2.8 percent of all formal sector deposits in the country.8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In terms of human development indicators, although the northern savannah regions account for a mere 20 percent of the national population, they contain about 60 percent of the poorest tenth of the national population.9 The health and nutritional conditions of the people in these regions are among the worst in the nation. For instance, these regions have the bleakest doctor/population ratios and hospital-bed/population ratios. As another result of colonial administrative policies, Northern Ghana has both the highest levels of illiteracy and the lowest levels of school enrollment. While all regions other than those of the northern sector had over 70 percent of their six-year olds in schools in 1984-85 the proportions of six-year olds in schools in the Northern, Upper East, and Upper West Regions were 30.95 percent, 36.23 percent, and 37.95 percent, respectively. In terms of investment flows, these three regions are the most deprived as well. Despite their comprising 20 percent of the total country’s population, the actual capital expenditure for education in these three regions for 1992 was only 11.6 percent of the annual budget for the entire nation.10 This brief profile of the social and economic conditions is sufficient to set the stage for a realistic analysis of the interactions between population and environment.

 

THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POPULATION GROWTH AND

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION

 

Subscribers to the neo-Malthusian orthodoxy of population theory put great emphasis on population growth as an independent variable accounting for generalized land degradation. Yet the evidence from human ecology research indicates that population growth is just one variable whose influence on the integrity of the environment depends in turn on the existing socio-political conditions of the society. Fig. 2 suggests a model for this ecological system of interactions.

According to this scheme, the ecological matrix of a region or of any territorial unit consists of its environment, population, technology, organization and culture. Here, ‘population’ refers not only to the numbers of people but to density, age-sex composition, occupational structure and, above all, the quality of the trained human resources in the region. ‘Environment’ denotes the natural environment and its resource base on the one hand and the man-made physical environment on the other.

‘Technology’ refers to both the material means and the knowledge available to utilize natural resources and to overcome environmental challenges. ‘Organization’ refers to existing political relations and economic structures that play important roles in determining the system of material reproduction on a continuing basis. ‘Culture’ refers to the ideational sphere of beliefs, values, norms, ideologies, customs and social practices.11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since this model is applicable to different territorial scales and levels (i.e. local, district, regional and national) it is important to locate this scheme within a wider political economic environment. This wider domain provides a significant structuring force that limits the capacity for action at lower levels. In Ghana’s case this outer boundary consists of the country overall and, at a higher level, the international political economy. The various components of this model are interrelated in such a way that a change in any one of them is likely to induce adjustments in the operation of the other systems. Population growth as an isolated numerical structure does not function autonomously; rather it influences and is influenced by the other variables.

 

Commoditisation, Rural-urban Terms of Trade and the Role of the State in Ecological Degradation. In most of Northern Ghana we find agricultural ‘mining’12 going on because the socio-economic system wherein the farmers are trapped encourages diverse forms of social exploitation. In their turn, these exploitive burdens are transferred to the natural environment. Further, the profit motive in the area’s post-independence agricultural development has led to a large-scale exploitation of its ecosystems, without concern for the ecosystems’ replenishment. This can be observed in large-scale mechanized farming and rural-urban terms of trade. Agricultural or soil ‘mining’ is a robber economy. When land is used in an extractive, non-sustainable way, the output is not replenished by inputs; so the integrity of the soil is destroyed. This results in deteriorating output, which in turn leads to progressively worse deterioration of the soil, water and vegetative resources of the land.

 

Technology of Production and the Ecological Crisis. In the past, traditional methods of agriculture (such as bush fallowing, shifting cultivation and pastoration) have all been based on technologies which adapt the agricultural system to the environment by allowing ecological recuperation over moderately long periods of time. Given low population densities and minimal pressure for either the cultivation of industrial raw materials or food for urban markets, these systems worked well since they relied on natural regenerative processes to recuperate the soils and to maintain ecological balance. With rapid population growth, urbanization and the need to produce raw materials for industries and the world market, the limits of the traditional farming systems have become all the more glaring. Physical constraints to production include the reliance on rainfed agriculture and the problems of drought, together with low soil fertility and the problems of pests. Biological constraints include the prevalence of genetically unimproved crops and undeveloped breeds of livestock. Technological constraints include the use of the hoe and the dibble stick which lead to the drudgery of farm work.13

Lacking faith in an evolutionary approach to development that is based on improving appropriate techniques derived from indigenous knowledge, there has been a rush to indiscriminately apply Western technologies that are generally unsuited to tropical agriculture. A case in point has been the widespread misuse of tractors on delicate tropical soils which only encourages erosion, laterization and desertification through the large-scale clearance of trees. Soil structure and chemistry are disturbed by deep ploughing, and soil compaction is caused by heavy machinery. These are all consequences of:

1. the quick fix solutions that were sought in order to catalyze an agricultural revolution under the state farm model; and

2. the predatory use of land by large-scale capitalist farming of rice, maize, cotton and other industrial crops. Such large-scale enterprises are practiced as a form of shifting cultivation because of the ready availability of land. Shifting cultivation involves abandoning one area for another after several years of use. The preferable method of combining stable, sustainable and permanent cultivation (involving inputs of nutrients) is neglected.

The ecological scars arising from the inappropriate use of tractors is most visible around Tamale, along the Tamale-Bolgatanga Road and in the Fumbissi Valley. Mechanized farming as applied in the temperate zone adapts environments to agriculture by the general practice of ‘stable agriculture’. Under this system there is an input of nutrients to balance extraction through cropping and grazing cycles so as to reduce the period of time required to complete the production, extraction and recovery cycles.

 

Reproductive Squeeze, Poverty and Environmental Degradation. There are yet other ways in which the problems of ecological degradation do not begin and end with the land-using peasants themselves. One particularly destructive complex of causes that ought to be mentioned here is the rural-urban terms of trade and the privatization of input delivery under the ongoing economic ‘structural adjustment program’ imposed by IMF terms of lending. Although there is a decline in the terms of trade of rural producers relative to manufactured goods from urban centers, this trend has been exacerbated by policies pursued under the IMF-decreed ‘structural adjustment’. For example, although available studies indicate that rural-urban terms of trade have shifted in favor of cocoa producers since 1986 as a result of producer price increases, the same cannot be said for producers of food locally consumed in Northern Ghana. This is because the major staples produced in Northern Ghana that enter interregional trade receive very little price support and no other attention from the government since local food staples are not among IMF prioritized export crops. The evidence in Table 1 on the next page is very instructive as the terms of trade have been abruptly turned against food producers in favor of manufacturers of non-food consumer items in the industrial centers of Southern Ghana, and also in favor of cocoa producers in the south.14

 

Table 1

 

RELATIVE PRICES OF FOOD;

GHANA 1977-87 (1997 = 100)

 

1977 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987

 

I 100 96 91 112 138 86 60 57 55

 

II 100 131 92 125 184 136 64 51 41

I = terms of trade food/non-food consumer items

II = relative prices of food/cocoa production

Source: Songsore (1992a) p. 164.

 

The overall negative effect of agricultural input policies under structural adjustment goes beyond the affordability of inputs, however. For example, privatization of input delivery has led to diminishing coverage and neglect of remote rural communities, thereby further limiting access to improved input methods of farming. This by itself is also bound to affect output negatively.15 More importantly, peasants are likely to turn from worsening poverty and input-deprivation to soil mining.

 

Rising Urban Demand for Biomass Fuels. Most urban households in large towns such as Tamale, Bolgatanga, Wa, Navrongo, Bawku and Yendi rely on woodfuel and charcoal as their principal sources of domestic energy and for commercial activities such as pito brewing and manufacture of foodstuffs for sale in the informal economy of the towns. Commercial production of biomass fuels for urban markets is one of the hidden causes of environmental degradation because of the lack of access for urban households to clean energy sources, such as Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and electricity. Although the overall focus in this discussion has been on rural landscapes, it is important to note that because of the weakness of municipal institutions for the sustainable management of our new towns, urban areas are rapidly becoming sites of accumulated waste and poor sanitation, posing severe health risks.

The complex historical, political, economic and demographic causes of the current environmental crisis range from the micro-level of the household and community, to the meso-level of the district and region, and further to the macro-level of the state. Furthermore it is important to consider the international sphere. Many African governments have lost control of their economies to international financial institutions as a result of growing debts, often resulting as much from inappropriate domestic policies as from an unjust international economic order. Consequently, these governments are incapable of addressing the developmental aspirations of their people and the requirements of sustainable development.16

 

PROCESSES OF AGRO-ECOLOGICAL CHANGE UNDER DEMOGRAPHIC PRESSURE IN NORTHERN GHANA

 

As these considerations show, the relationship between demographic pressure and ecological degradation is not a straightforward one. In an expanding regional economy that is technologically innovative and gradually industrializing, the structural shifts of labor into non-farm production and the revolution of agricultural technology may indeed lead to increased food output with less labor and reduced area under agricultural production. For a variety of reasons, such a process (which most industrialized societies have gone through) has failed to materialize in Ghana. There are some scholars, including Boserup (1965), who have argued that population growth has provided the impetus for a change from simplistic and more wasteful systems of farming to more intensive, technologically advanced systems. The Machakos experience in Kenya has demonstrated that rapid population growth is compatible with sustainable environmental management under appropriate conditions.17

The evidence concerning Northern Ghana indicates an entirely different scenario of economic neglect, poverty, and mounting rural densities in isolated pockets of a generally underpopulated area. Since the land area of Northern Ghana cannot be increased, there is some appeal in the hypothesis that due to natural increase and in-migration, mounting rural population densities are causing ecological degradation—especially given the technology predominantly in use.

The average annual population growth rates of 2.3 percent and 2.5 percent for the Upper West and Upper East Regions are well below the national average of 3.0 percent. However, the Northern Region has the fastest population growth rate in Ghana. This high growth rate within the Northern Region is partly due to its relatively low initial population density and the good prospects for agricultural migrants from other regions and from outside Ghana.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whereas the Upper West and Upper East Regions have been experiencing a decline in their relative shares of the total national population between 1960 and 1984, the Northern Region, in contrast, has increased its share of the national population. Except for the Upper East Region, the average population densities are among the lowest in Ghana (17 persons per sq. km. in the Northern Region and 24 persons per sq. km. in the Upper West). The population density of 87 persons per sq. km. in the Upper East is well above the national average of 57. This is also the region in Northern Ghana where ecological degradation seems to be the most acute. For more detailed population density patterns see Fig. 3 on the previous page.18

Thus, whereas the population of Northern Ghana remained stationary or even declined in the period immediately preceding the establishment of colonial rule, it has since been witnessing a gradual increase. This early stability in population was largely due to the prevalence of epidemic diseases and the activities of slave raiders such as the Samori, Babatu, Amrahi and Asante warriors.19 This in turn led to the depopulation of the entire Middle Belt, which extends from the Tumu Gap down to Brong-Ahafo. Two other reasons for the below-average growth rates in the two Upper Regions are the high levels of infant and child mortality and the negative net migration from the regions. In contrast, although infant and child mortality rates are equally high for the entire Northern Region, the area is a net receiver of migrants.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the demographic process that threatens the ecological integrity of some agro-ecological zones within Northern Ghana is the extreme unevenness in distribution of this largely rural population. The atmosphere of insecurity in the pre-colonial period led to the crowding of the population into watersheds, and the abandonment of fertile river valleys led to subsequent tsetse infestation.20

The factors involved in ecological degradation consist of all the processes that lead to the deterioration of the quality and productivity rating of the land. These often result in:

1. reduction of biodiversity, including stocks of plant and animal species;

2. decrease in the natural vegetation cover, increasing soil exposure and evapotranspiration;

3. increased impoverishment of the soil in terms of organic matter, soil depth, structure — through accelerated erosion, leaching, desiccation due to loss of moisture-holding capacity and the formation of hard pans of lateritic concretions; and finally

4. siltation of ponds and dams by the deposition of eroded material.21

Although these effects can be induced by the natural cycles of climatic change within the geological time scale, the greatest culprit and accelerator of deterioration has been the inappropriate land management by humankind itself. Since we are close to the Sudano-Sahelian zone this could all lead to desertification, given a drastic reduction in rainfall, with the consequent human tragedy of famine and dislocation of the entire society.

Rose Innes (1964) has described the anthropogenic processes of ecological degradation in the Northern and Upper Regions of Ghana as consisting of a cycle of events that include the following:

1. clearing of agricultural land using simple tools, fire and more recently, tractors and clearing machinery;

2. grazing of ruminants (cattle, goats and sheep);

3. gathering of fuelwood and settlement construction;

4. bush burning as a generalized practice which has had widespread effects on both the cover and composition of vegetation in the region.22

The intensified cycle of these events consequent upon both human population growth and an increased ruminant population has meant the shortening of the fallow period, thereby limiting the regenerative capacity of soils, flora, and fauna and an expansion of human activity into frontier zones.

 

Existing Agro-ecological Regimes in Northern Ghana. The processes sketched in the preceding section have led to the emergence of the following agro-ecological zones at different stages of land degradation (Fig. 4). The following are varied agro-ecological adaptations in response to the growing pressures on resources, given the limits to the technology of production currently in use:

1. Bush farm dominant with supplementary compound farms and unlimited commons;

2. Bush farm dominant with supplementary compound farms and limited fallows;

3. Compound farm dominant with supplementary bush farms and privatization of economic trees in the limited fallows.23

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bush Farm Dominant with Supplementary Compound Farms and Unlimited Commons. This land management regime occurs in the ‘resource frontier’ areas. In the Upper West it is found in the eastern parts of Wa and Nadawli Districts and almost the whole of Tumu District including the so-called ‘overseas territories’. Here average population densities are below 10 persons per sq. km. It is the predominant land management regime in the Northern Region outside the perimeters of large settlements such as Tamale. In the Upper East, except in the Builsa District, it has become an extinct land use. The system of land colonization often starts with the creation of new settlements consisting of a few households. The initial farms tend to be close to the settlement. But as the settlement attracts new migrants and as the ruminant population increases, the following land uses develop:

(a) Small compound farms may persist around the settlement.

(b) This is surrounded by a belt of disused, formerly cultivated areas which are reserved fallows for the browsing of domestic animals such as goats and sheep, and for tethering these animals during the wet season when the compound farms are under crop.

(c) Beyond (b) is a belt of bush farms interspersed with long fallows.

(d) At the outer limits of the village may still exist unallocated commons with nearly virgin or primeval conditions. These are called fire climax vegetation formations since their biodiversity is due to fire that occurs every dry season.

The ecological integrity of this type of regime is still largely intact because of the existence of long fallow periods allowing for natural regenerative processes to restore ecological balance. However these are areas exhibiting an urgent need for planned intervention to prevent the practice of soil mining and extensive cultivation in the quest for quick profit. Areas under this regime could be the future granary of the region and the country if managed in a sustainable manner through organic agriculture.24 This zone encompasses 50 percent to 70 percent of the land area of Northern Ghana.

 

Bush Farm Dominant with Supplementary Compound Farms and Limited Fallows. Once population densities rise to anywhere between 10 to 50 persons per sq. km., the system just described tends to give way to a second type of land use system characterized by bush farm dominant with supplementary compound farms and limited fallows. The two-field system of agricultural land use persists but with the following differences:

(a) Communal land tenure disappears and is replaced by family ownership, since no unallocated village commons exist except for fetish groves.

(b) Woody species and fodder resources in fallow areas decline as the fallow period progressively falls to less than five years. This time period does not allow for the full regeneration of woody species.

(c) As a result of pressure on wood resources for woodfuel and for crafts and building, economic trees such as sheanut for butter and dawadawa fruit trees for soup gradually dominate since they are protected by slash and burn agriculture and by fuelwood foraging. Meanwhile other woody species progressively disappear.

(d) Wildlife resources are degraded and virtually disappear due to the destruction of their habitats and unsustainable hunting.

(e) Soils are degraded, consequent upon the shortened fallow period, thereby threatening village food security.

(f) Hardier crops replace more preferable staple food crops.

The agro-ecological regime just described is the second most dominant in terms of land area, covering between 20 percent to 30 percent of the total land area of Northern Ghana. The Upper West covers the remaining parts of Wa, Nadawli, Jirapa-Lambussie Districts, and small residual parts of Lawra District. In the case of the Upper East Region it occurs in cells along river valleys that had been taken over until recently by onchocerciasis and trypanosomiasis. The regime is dominant in the Builsa District. In the Northern Region it occurs along the more densely settled transportation axis running from Tamale to Bolgatanga. This agro-ecological zone is characterized by rapid natural resource depletion. However, its ecological integrity could easily be restored if appropriate action is taken now.

Once the system of field shifting under the bush fallow practice is further limited there is again the transition to a third type of land use system characterized by more intensive land management and privatization of farming lands and trees.

 

Compound Farm Dominant with Supplementary Bush Farms and Privatization of Economic Trees in the Limited Fallows. As population densities mount to 50-1,000 persons per sq. km. the dominant land management regime features a predominance of compound farms with residual or supplementary bush farms. Indeed, for some land-hungry families all that may be left is a small patch of compound farm. There is miniaturization of land through subdivision. Also there emerges further privatization of land, economic trees and other tree species as the village commons in fallows completely disappear. Wherever bush farms exist in this zone, they are so impoverished that there is a progressive shift to intensifying production on compound farms. "Unlike for the earlier land management regime, there emerges a conscious application of animal droppings, household wastes and the inclusion of leguminous crops such as groundnuts and bambaranuts in a deliberate crop rotation. Small patches of exhausted soils are left from year to year for tethering domestic animals during the farming season."25

In the Upper West Region this system is common in the present Lawra District and cells are developing around the settlements of Jirapa, Nadawli and Sankana-Takpo. This system is common in the Upper East Region where it is the dominant type of land use in the Navrongo, Bolgatanga and Bawku Districts. Overall it covers 10-20 percent of the total land area of Northern Ghana. This agro-ecological zone is affected by moderate to severe degradation, characterized by the loss of vegetation cover, soil erosion, the development of duricrust or lateritic hard pans and the emergence of Sudano-Sahelian conditions as the first phase in the desertification process. There is a need to restore the ecological integrity of these areas through the encouragement of more intensive agricultural practices, land reclamation through agroforestry development and induced labor movements to the new resource frontiers. Such inducements should include infrastructural supports — roads, market centers, clinics and schools — to be provided in the frontier areas.

 

Reserved Areas. It is important to acknowledge the existence of forest and game reserves and to a lesser extent the fetish groves. The most prominent game reserve is the Mole Game Reserve. The fetish groves are patches of protected original vegetation where the earth gods reside, often located around watersheds. This used to be an effective way of protecting the local biodiversity before Christianity and modernization led to the abuse of the fetish groves. These various sanctuaries of biodiversity have been affected only by fire. They promise to be vital in any future program for restoring the ecological integrity of degraded areas.

As we have argued, the cycle of agro-ecological transition begins with the opening up of resource frontiers. This is followed by a second phase of effective production. The third phase is marked by spaces that are left behind after the more dynamic phase of production has resulted in exhaustion. At this point the villages begin to ‘export’ or expel their excess population into new resource frontiers in a process of predatory migration of peasants arising from agricultural mining of the soil.26

Contrary to popular dogma, the disharmonies (i.e. territorial location of production vis-a-vis ecosystem potential and stability, and the eco-technological gap in the adjustments of production within specific environmental niches) are not wholly the result of internal processes such as demographic expansion. Rather, they are as much the result of external pressures arising from the logic of capital accumulation imposed upon the region from outside.

 

TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTALLY

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

 

It is obvious that the current unfolding ecological crisis in Northern Ghana is essentially induced by political and economic relations. The crisis can likewise be solved through human action at the local, district, regional, national and global levels of intervention, co-operation and support. The current concern over rural environmental degradation started by positing human numbers as the central problem. Since it has been observed that this factor is only part of a complex structure we might expect that the solution could also begin by investing in human development through education, health provision and economic empowerment of individuals. The demographic transition occurred in the West because those governments invested in their citizens. This emphasis in turn influenced individuals’ life styles and resulted in a transition to increased life-expectancy and decreased birth rates. An informed, trained and skillfully employed population is also able to overcome the narrow limits of environmental constraints through technological innovation. Consequently, environmental education should be actively promoted in school. There should also be a population redistribution strategy that seeks a more rational balance between people and land. (This entails construction of roads, schools, clinics and related infrastructure in needed locations). These goals should be pursued with the same vigor that has been accorded family planning programs.

There is also the need to promote the adoption of environmentally sound technologies such as minimum tillage, non-till systems and alley-cropping. This should be an area of active research by the new University for Development Studies at Tamale, Ghana. At the community and regional levels, it is vital to facilitate effective planning and supervision in the use of village land. This implies lasting social contracts with regard to land ownership, and for the different uses to which land can be put. At the national and international levels, there is a comparable need for major modification in the terms of economic exchange between town and country throughout the nation, and between poor debt-servicing countries such as Ghana and their international partners.

At the very least, District Assemblies, NGOs and traditional authorities should be committed to the following minimum set of actions:

1. Education should be compulsory for all school-age children and practically facilitated through scholarship schemes run by district assemblies.

2. Land capability surveys should recommend agro-pastoral practices consistent with the effective management of different types of soil.

3. Anti-desertification and deforestation measures should be implemented, such as the creation of woodlots and the introduction of improved stoves and bio-gas systems, along with improvements in kerosene and LPG supply to urban households.

4. More improved pasture lands to prevent overgrazing should be developed.

5. In the absence of effective implementation of by-laws aimed at eliminating bush-burning, programs should recommend early bush-burning instead of late burning to minimize the destructive impact on the vegetation.

6. A wildlife management program is required, together with enforcement of existing forestry reserve policies.27 These could be handled by environmental management committees at district, ward, and community levels.

For these policies to stand any chance of success, close cooperation and active partnership is required between local people, the different layers of the state apparatus and NGOs such as the Catholic Diocese.

 

NOTES

 

1. This chapter is a version of a paper in African Studies Research Review (1996). It was originally presented at a seminar on Decentralisation and the Environment, organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in collaboration with the Upper West Regional Administration and the Catholic Diocese of Wa, from 9th-13th January, 1994 in Wa, Ghana.

2. Brown and Wolf (1987) p. 22.

3. Human Development Report, (1992) p. 16.

4. Chadwick (1994) p. 7.

5. Adams (1991).

6. Wilmoth and Ball (1992); Hardin (1977).

7. Songsore (1992a) p. 158.

8. Songsore (1992b) pp. 86-87.

9. ROG/UNICEF (1990) p. 205.

10. World Bank (1992) p. 13.

11. Van Raaij (1974) p. 13.

12. Agricultural or soil ‘mining’ refers to over-use land, which means yearly planting without any fallow period or other restorative measures to sustain fertility of the soil.

13. Songsore (1990); Okigbo (1989).

14. Songsore (1992a).

15. Jebuni and Seini (1992).

16. See A.O. Abudu, "Counterproductive Socioeconomic Management in Ghana," in this volume.

17. Mortimore and Tiffen (1994).

18. Benneh and Agyepong (1990).

19. Songsore and Denkabe (1995).

20. Hilton (1966) pp. 27-29.

21. The Dept. of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana (Nov. 1992) p. 103.

22. Ibid, p. 136; also Korem (1985).

23. Songsore (1976); Songsore (1992c).

24. Training and reinforcement for organic agriculture under the scheme ‘Integrated Pest Management (IPM)’ is detailed by K. Afreh-Nuamah, Chapter Eleven in this volume.

25. Songsore (1992c) p. 8.

26. Thomson (1977) mimeo, p. 37.

27. Songsore and Denkabe (1995) pp. 124-125.

 

REFERENCES

 

Adams, W.M. (1990) Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in the Third World, London: Routledge.

Benneh, G., Agyepong, G.T. and Allotey, J.A. (1990) Land Degradation in Ghana, May.

Boserup, Esther (1965) The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, Chicago: Aldne.

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