Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Adaptation Interventions on Agro-Pastoral Dams: A case study in Northern Ghana

Abstract

Agro-pastoral dams (APDs) are an increasingly popular method of adaptation interventions improving communal water supply in rural West Africa. However, APDs are often constructed in areas where culturally heterogeneous pastoralists and farmers compete for similar land and water resources. Lifting open access water abundance is likely to change if not intensify ongoing tensions between farmers and settling Fulani herders. The sustainability and inclusivity of several APDs in Northern Ghana are analysed, combining theory from common-pool resource management and equity and justice in climate change adaptation into a proposed ‘sustainability-inclusivity manipulation (SIM) model. Practically, the thesis demonstrates that neither fully excluding Fulani pastoralists nor making dams openly accessible results in sustainable and inclusive APD usage and management, and more dynamic forms of regional inclusion and exclusion are needed. Theoretically, the thesis identifies some of the limitations of applying current common-pool resource theory as it tends to overlook negative aspects of excluding certain user groups in culturally heterogeneous contexts from managing and using a common-pool resource.