Scale and co-management outcomes: assessing the impact of collaborative forest management on community and household resilience in Ghana

Co-management – institutional arrangements that involve the sharing of power, rights and responsibilities between states and resource users – provides a framework for managing common pool resources across multiple scales. However, the scale concept has not received widespread recognition in the assessment of co-management outcomes. This study employed a mixed methods research approach to assess the impacts of collaborative forest management (CFM) on social-ecological resilience at the community and household levels in two forest-dependent communities in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Analysis of qualitative data at the community level indicated that although specific impacts of the CFM program varied within and across the various types of capital assets that shape community resilience, the overall impact of the program on both communities has been positive. At the household level, a statistical comparison of past and current household capital assets showed varying levels of decline in household conditions across the two communities during the implementation of the CFM program. It appears the modest gains from the CFM program at the community level may not have been equitably distributed at the household level. These results suggest that the impact of co-management and other conservation policies may be sensitive to the level at which observation is done. Greater recognition of the importance of scale and cross-scale interactions is needed to inform the formulation of forest policies that contribute to building social-ecological resilience across scales.