Climate-smart cocoa in Ghana: Examining discourses, trade-offs and implications for cocoa smallholders Felix Nasser Master’s thesis (60 ECTS) Landscapes research theme Social-ecological Resilience for Sustainable Development Master’s programme 2017-19 Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), Stockholm University Supervisor: Grace Wong (SRC) Co-supervisor: Victoria Maguire-Rajpaul (University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute) “All be lie, some be true.” I dedicate this thesis to Isaac De-Graft, also known as “Uncle Alhaji”. 1 Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 6 2. Theoretical frameworks ..................................................................................................... 8 2.1. Meta-discourses ......................................................................................................... 9 2.2. Equity ........................................................................................................................ 11 2.3. Agroecology .............................................................................................................. 13 2.3.1. Agroecology and agroforestry in Ghanaian cocoa ........................................... 13 3. Methods ........................................................................................................................... 15 3.4. Research Design ....................................................................................................... 15 3.4.1. Literature review .............................................................................................. 16 3.4.2. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions ................................ 17 3.4.3. Participant observation (PO) ............................................................................ 18 3.4.4. Data analysis ..................................................................................................... 18 3.5. Case study sites ........................................................................................................ 19 4. Results .............................................................................................................................. 22 4.1. Local reflections of meta-discourses ........................................................................ 23 4.1.1. Ecological modernisation ................................................................................. 23 4.1.2. Green governmentality .................................................................................... 25 4.1.3. Civic environmentalism .................................................................................... 25 4.2. Equity ........................................................................................................................ 26 4.2.1. Distributive Equity ............................................................................................ 26 4.2.2. Procedural equity ............................................................................................. 28 4.2.3. Contextual Equity ............................................................................................. 29 4.2.3.1. Tree tenure ................................................................................................... 29 4.2.3.2. Financial and gender related constraints ..................................................... 30 4.3. The role of agroecology in CSC ...................................................................................... 31 5. Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 33 5.1. Ecological modernisation – does the win-win hold? ............................................... 33 5.1.1. Tree tenure rights and contextual equity ........................................................ 34 5.1.2. Optimal shade and tree cover .......................................................................... 35 5.1.3. The role of agrochemicals ................................................................................ 35 5.1.4. Land sparing or rebound effect? ...................................................................... 36 5.2. Agroecology and ecological modernisation ............................................................. 37 5.3. CREMAs and local governance structures ................................................................ 38 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 40 7. Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 41 2 8. References ........................................................................................................................ 42 9. Appendices ....................................................................................................................... 52 Appendix I Ontological and Epistemology of this study....................................................... 52 Appendix II General interview guide .................................................................................... 53 Appendix III Interview and FGD guide for farmers .............................................................. 55 Appendix IV Limitations and methodological reflections of study ...................................... 56 Appendix V Ethics review – final review .............................................................................. 59 Appendix VI Coding structure used in the analysis of the data. .......................................... 60 Appendix VII Main CSC related interventions in the study sites. ......................................... 61 Appendix VIII Boom and bust cycle in the cocoa sector ...................................................... 63 Appendix IX Initial ethics review .......................................................................................... 64 3 Acronyms CSC – Climate-Smart Cocoa CSA – Climate-Smart Agriculture CREMA – Community Resource Management Area Mechanism FAO – Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations GMO – Genetically Modified Organism ICRAF – World Agroforestry Centre IDH – The Sustainable Trade Initiative NCRC – Nature Conservation Research Centre NTFP – Non-Timber-Forest-Product PES – Payment for Ecosystem services REDD+ – Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Word count: 9961 4 Abstract Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) has emerged as a concept to address the multiple challenges and interdependencies of agriculture and climate change. Within CSA debates, equity and agroecology are especially contested. In Ghana, the concept of climate-smart cocoa (CSC) has emerged to simultaneously respond to high rates of deforestation, climate change pressures and low productivity of cocoa – Ghana’s principal agricultural export. Since CSC in Ghana is a nascent concept, it has received very little academic or critical appraisal. By applying a meta- discourse framework, this study aimed at gaining insights into local CSC discourses in Ghana and how these reflect global environmental meta-discourses. The adoption of certain discourses can reveal insights into subsequent policies and their implications for already marginalised cocoa smallholders. My findings are based on 37 qualitative interviews with cocoa smallholders, extension officers as well as governmental, non-governmental and private sector representatives of Ghana’s cocoa sector. Overall, my results suggest that an ecological modernisation discourse was the most pronounced meta-discourse reflected within CSC. A sustainable intensification discourse was the most common CSC practice to achieve a win-win between environment and development aspirations. Agroecological practices within CSC were mainly adopted to serve ecological modernisation discourses and are thus diametrically opposed to those promoted by more radical meta-discourses. Issues of contextual equity, especially regarding tree tenure, were ubiquitous, and discussed by a large majority of cocoa stakeholders. I caution that an overly simplistic win-win approach risks side-lining contextual equity issues and complexities regarding shade cover and agrochemical input. Community Resource Management Area Mechanisms (CREMAs) and other local governance mechanisms represent promising ways to balance trade-offs within the dominant CSC discourse by giving cocoa smallholders a stronger voice. However, given the dominance of large agricultural actors – such as foreign chocolate companies – within the current political economy of Ghana’s cocoa sector, this study cautions not to overestimate the potential of these local governance structures. 5 1. Introduction Today’s dominant global agricultural model is not only a major driver of climate change, responsible for around 25% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but it is also vulnerable to climate change impacts (Vermeulen et al. 2012, Tubiello et al. 2015, IPBES 2018). In particular, agricultural expansion into tropical rainforest has been identified as a substantial driver of global GHG emissions and local climatic changes (Lawrence and Vandecar 2015). To address the complexity of these challenges, climate-smart agriculture (CSA), has become an increasingly popular concept (Taylor 2018). It proposes “triple wins” through an approach that incorporates: