Research, part of a Special Feature on Local, Social, and Environmental Impacts of Biofuels Land-based Investments for Rural Development? A Grounded Analysis of the Local Impacts of Biofuel…

By G. Schoneveld, Laura German, E. Nutakor. 2011

254 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The rapidly growing biofuel sector in Africa has, in recent years, been received with divided interest. As part of a contemporary wave of agricultural modernization efforts, it could make invaluable contributions to rural poverty. Conversely, it could also engender socioeconomically and environmentally detrimental land use changes as valuable land resources are converted to plantation agriculture. This research analyzes the impacts and impact pathways of biofuel feedstock development in Ghana. It finds that companies are accessing large contiguous areas of customary land through opaque negotiations with traditional authorities, often outside the purview of government and customary land users. Despite lack of participation, most customary land users were highly supportive of plantation development, with high expectations of 'development' and 'modernization.' With little opposition and resistance, large areas of agricultural and forested land are at threat of being converted to plantation monoculture. A case study analysis shows that this can significantly exacerbate rural poverty as communities lose access to vital livelihood resources. Vulnerable groups, such as women and migrants, are found to be most profoundly affected because of their relative inability in recovering lost livelihood resources. Findings suggest that greater circumspection by government is warranted on these types of large-scale land deals.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b39b6e2d486c18982b3aca9aa79405d2ce1e7f87

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In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

In Pollution

G. Schoneveld

Citations in the corpus

Land grabbing, social differentiation, intensified migration and food security in northern Ghana (2017, result): “These findings are similar to those reported by Schoneveld, German, and Nutakor (2011), and Tsikata and Yaro (2014), who have demonstrated that in largescale land grabbing in northern Ghana, women’s resource rights are constricted more easily than men’s.”
Plantations, Contract Farming and Commercial Farming Areas in Africa: A Comparative Review (2013, background): “And what about those who do not engage in plantation labour? They include: locals who are not favoured by the plantation recruiters or local elites, such as settler migrants in Brong Ahafo, Ghana (Schoneveld et al. 2011).”
Testing Claims about Large Land Deals in Africa: Findings from a Multi-Country Study (2014, result): “In Ghana, two regions feature more prominently, namely the Brong Ahafo Region and the Northern region.”
The geographic and sectoral patterns of large-scale farmland investments in sub-Saharan Africa (2014, background): “…from the potential contribution of biofuels to improving the carbon balance, and displace traditional livelihood activities due to inadequate statutory protection of customary user claims, which in turn undermines local food and income security (Schoneveld et al., 2011; Väth, 2012; Shete, 2013).”
Intersectionality and energy transitions: A review of gender, social equity and low-carbon energy (2020, background): “[88] outline the joint role of the private sector and the local government in establishing jatropha plantations in rural Philippines and Ghana, respectively.”