Community forest monitoring and the social reproduction of inequalities in Ghana

Since the emergence of collaborative resource governance in the 1990s,many scientists, governments, and development practitioners are working to improve forest-fringe communities (FFCs) involvement in forest management for better outcomes. However, how such efforts affect inequalities within communities in resource frontiers is underexplored, even more so in forest monitoring. This study attempts to overcome this challenge through a qualitative analysis of intersectionality of the actors engaged in community forest monitoring (CFM) and its effects on inequality among FFCs in Ghana. Data were collected through focus group discussions and interviews with community forest monitors, forestry officials and NGOs in eight forest districts and content analyis applied to the transcripts. The findings revealed that CFM has introduced new forms of agency in the study localities, stirred gender norms and practices, leading to the further exclusion of some of the most marginalised actors. For example, by constructing CFM as a physically demanding and confrontational activity, and females as nurturers, men wrestle control over monitoring roles, confining women to clerical and household duties. Furthermore, by painting migrants as 'illegal farmers' that destroy protected forests, indigenes exclude migrants from participating in community forest monitoring. Meanwhile, indigenes are equal culprits of illicit farming as their way of resisting the state's appropriation of their ancestral lands. The findings suggest that development agencies need to pay more attention to how they constitute CFM groups, given keen attention to local political dynamics and intersectionality among community actors if equitable inclusion is to be achieved.