Making dams work in northern ghana

BRIEFING PAPER MAKING DAMS WORK IN NORTHERN GHANA

BY RUBEN WEESIE AND SEBASTIAAN SOETERS Dams and/or dugouts are a popular method for strengthening adaptive capacity and improving food security in northern Ghana. Not only do dams and dugouts reduce farmers’ exposure to increasingly variable rainfall, by making farming a year -round enterprise, it diversifies farmer and household income streams. As a result, both donor-driven programming, and flagship policy frameworks of the Government of Ghana (GoG) push for the construction of dams in northern Ghana, to stimulate development of the agricultural sectors, alleviate poverty and to strengthen adaptive capacity. The GoG’s ‘One Village, One Dam’ policy is the jewel in the crown of development and poverty alleviation efforts in northern Ghana. The following policy brief is based on research conducted in the Upper West Region.

Whilst the potential for dams to ignite development, alleviate poverty and strengthen adaptive capacity, dams have proven, however, to not be unproblematic in northern Ghana, where ethnic Fulani pastoralists and resident farmers compete for land and water resources. In this context, dams have, and continue to exacerbate conflict. A defining feature of the communities in and around the Afram plains in the south of the country, where conflicts between farmer and Fulani pastoralists are most frequent, most intense and most prone to violence, is the abundance of water (not the scarcity), and the potential to farm year-round. Simi mass dam construction (being promoted by the GoG’s ‘One Village, One Dam, and supported by donor governments), will radically increase the abundance of water and seeks, explicitly, ‘to make farming a year-round enterprise. n short, dams serve to increase pressure on land use, as both cattle numbers and area used for dry season farming increase as a result, exacerbate conflict, or increase the risk thereof. The question then is, ‘how can dams contribute to more sustainable water and land uses in contexts where pastoralists and farmers compete over water and land resources?’.

Importantly, the lack of sustainability of many dams in northern Ghana is not caused by a shortage water supply, but rather by institutional insufficiencies and a lack of appropriate governance structures. To date, contemporary community-based dam projects do recognise ‘software’ problems relating to the governance of dams. As a remedy, many initiatives support the appointing of local/dam-level management committees that monitor the resources, resolve conflicts between farmers over water-use and organize collective action, including, in some instances, the exclusion of Fulani pastoralists. However, the mobile nature of pastoral livelihoods mean that excluded pastoralists often respond to exclusion from one dam, by making use of another nearby dam where the communities capacity to act collectively to exclude pastoralism is less developed.

The problem of conflict, over-use and unsustainability is therefore simply transplanted to other communities and reaching sustainability by rigidly excluding pastoralists by one community/dam committee imposes unsustainable externalities on neighbouring dams. Not only does local dam management in northern Ghana need to find a middle ground between being accessible for multiple user-groups, an appropriate institutional framework should also recognise a system of dams, rather than isolated, individual community dams.

FROM COMMUNITIES TO LANDSCAPES: RECOGNISING SYSTEMS OF DAMS FOR CONFLICT SENSITIVE PATHWAYS TO SUSTAINABLE DAMS. Current policy and practice that focus on ‘one village, one dam’ should be complemented with development of landscape-wide institutional arrangements. Local and landscape-wide arenas of discussion and deliberative dialogue between farmers and Fulani pastoralists is required, in order to recognise a system of dams.

Such a dialogue can only develop if the GoG acknowledges the role of both settled and transhumance Fulani pastoralists in the usage and management of water and land resources throughout northern Ghana. The culminating institutional arrangements should create a situation where dams are neither completely open access, nor rigidly excluding certain user groups. Only then can dams be used and managed more sustainable in the regional context. The promotion of excludability of a resource and single user groups – such as a sole focus on development of crop farming – are unrealistic and have unsustainable externalities in Northern Ghana.

If the future dams constructions, resulting from the donor projects and the new “One Village, One Dam” policy in Northern Ghana wish to contribute to be sustainable and inclusive, several concrete issues need to be taken into account. Dams should be neither full open access without institutional arrangements (which is now often the case), nor should pastoralists be rigidly excluded (which is sometimes the case), because both such scenarios lead to conflict and overuse of dams within a landscape.

Solely improving water abundance with limited institutional focus, as the current activities of the Adaptation Fund and the national “One Village, One Dam” project primarily seek to do, is not a sustainable intervention. Instead, dry-season farmers and Fulani pastoralists should both be able to access and manage dams. Fulani could be seasonally included in regions with dams depending on the water availability of each dam and surrounding pasture. Landscape-wide dynamic forms of water access for Fulani pastoralists are required. Most fundamentally, planning dams should occur at landscape scale, recognising a systems of dams, where mobile pastoralists can be incorporated into water and land management practices. The following page provide a number of more concrete requirements for inclusive, sustainable and conflict sensitive dam-building for development.

TOWARDS INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE APD USAGE AND MANAGEMENT In more detail, future dam interventions could; 

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Establish landscape-wide dam committee representing a system of dams within a landscape, discussing dam access by communities without dams, as well as settled and seasonally migratory Fulani users. They should agree on a landscape-coherent strategy (instead at the individual community-level), including contribution/ payment requirements for dam usage.

Formulate agreements on who has the right to use dam water, when, and at what costs on a landscape scale – including Fulani settled in the community and in neighbouring communities.

Establish arrangements where maintenance work or small fees should be contributed by dam users. Contributions should be based on the number of cows or farming area utilised by the dam user. If multiple dams are used by a pastoralist or stockowner, fees can be distributed through the landscape through a landscape dam committee (see below) and paid to elected dam committees.

Organise elections for ‘dam leaders’ who chair dam committees. They should have strong connections with diverse dam users and the local traditional elite. Dam committees should include people that use the dam for different purposes and preferably college graduates and influential elders. Leaders should be chosen on majority vote by the dam users every 1-3 years.

Involve socio-economically diverse dry season farmers in using dams – provide support for farming inputs for poorer farmers, widows and other vulnerable groups.

Involve communities without dams neighbouring dam communities in dam usage and management. Livestock owners and settled Fulani pastoralists from neighbouring communities that are interested in using the dam should be involved in dam usage and management, and contribute if they use the dam.

Provide to the dam leaders and management committees scientific information on carrying capacity, regeneration rates and maintenance requirements for the dams.

Advise on gradual sanctioning methods if people misuse/overuse the dams or do not contribute to maintenance. A small sanction can be small money fees, and more severe sanctions can restrict dam usage.

Advise on rotational schemes of monitoring by those that use the dam themselves for both farming and livestock. The monitors carry the responsibility of collecting maintenance and usage fees for a dam Using the suggested regional dam committee, appoint cross-communal cattle corridors to APDs, so as to enable Fulani pastoralists to use different dams across the landscape Invest in irrigation infrastructure that can be maintained by the dry season farmers. While there is generally sufficient water in the dams, they mainly need durable infrastructure to move the water onto the plots through for example furrows in combination with shallow wells. Irrigation with buckets is seen as too labour intensive for most potential dry season farmers which is why it is a major hindrance to further development

In conclusion, current (northern) Ghanaian adaptation policy discourse regards improving water supply through open access dams as a magic bullet to strengthen adaptive capacity. These have been a source of conflict between farmer and Fulani pastoralists for a number of decades. The new ‘One Village, One Dam’ governmental flagship project is not likely to improve these issues if it only focuses on improving open access water supply, largely aimed at farmers. Complete open access dams are a solution for sustainable and inclusive usage and cooperation between farmers and pastoralists. Both rigid exclusion of certain groups on the one hand, and unbridled open access to an dams by all user groups on the other hand, do not lead to sustainable and inclusive dam usage. The problem is often not water supply, but institutional supply. In order to develop both local and landscape arrangements, deliberative arenas of discussion and dialogue between farmers and Fulani pastoralists need to be promoted, which recognise a systems of dams within a landscape. The list of suggestions above provide an overview of necessary local and landscape institutional arrangements required in order for adaptation policy and practice in northern Ghana to be conflict sensitive and induce more sustainable and efficient dam projects in the future.

TOWARDS INCLUSIVE CLIMATE CHANGE INTERVENTIONS (TICCI) IS AN INITIATIVE OF UTRECHT UNIVERSITY (UU), CARE INTERNATIONAL GHANA, ILEPA, CSIR-SARI AND INERA. ITS IS FUNDED BY DFID THROUGH THE DUTCH ORGANOISATION FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH (NWO-WOTRO).