M. Sc. trop. forestry Bernard Nsiah
PhD student / Ghana
Titel of the dissertation:
Contribution of forest plantations to the livelihoods of rural households. The case of rural households in Ghana.
supervisor: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Pretzsch
Projektbeschreibung / Description
Forest plantations development was a subject of political discussion in many developing countries in the 1960s. The Ghana government promoted the establishment of forest plantations during this period. However, the momentum for died shortly due to the "top-down" approach the state used to force rural people to establish plantations.
Plantation development has nowadays assumed an enlarged role due its potential to provide forest products and income for rural households, serving as carbon sink to mitigate global climate change, and protecting plant and animal diversity. The advent of the Kyoto Protocol (1997), and the United Nations Convention on Climatic Change (UNFCCC, 1992) has further enhanced the prospects of forest plantations development worldwide.
The development of plantation is however, confronted with a new challenge with the introduction of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 1992), as to how to develop uneven-aged and mix-culture plantations to ensure plant and animal diversity. Notwithstanding these controversies, there is widespread agreement that there is the need to research further into plantations establishment in order to address these new challenges.
Specific objectives of the study
The present study aims at identifying the rationale behind the development of forest plantations by rural households and verify to what extent these plantations contribute to the livelihoods of the households.
Under the umbrella of this broad objective, the following specific objectives will be pursued in this study:
- ascertain the perception of rural households towards plantation development
- assess the contribution of plantation forest to the cash income of households
- explore the constraints limiting the development of forest plantations by rural households
- verify the extent to which the establishment of plantations on degraded forest land account contribute to biomass production