Safeguarding land-based climate investments in Ghana with blockchain
THE QUESTION
Can digital land-rights measurement, reporting and verification help provide greater security and income for Ghanaian Farmers, giving them access to global carbon markets?
LOCATION: Ghana
SECTOR: Climate and Environment
TECH: Blockchain
TIMELINE: September 2022 - March 2023
PIONEER: Georgina Barker
PARTNERS: BenBen & Oko Forests
The Challenge
In Ghana, land is majorly owned and administered by communities and families. Tenure is undocumented and less secure, making it difficult to track in a situation where only about 2% land registration is documented. Another angle is the automatic state ownership of ‘naturally occurring trees’ and related revenue which limits the motivation of farmers and communities to replant trees when there is no immediate motivation for commercially viable opportunities.
The Idea
Utilising the collective power of communal ownership and the potential of technology, the blockchain-backed project sought to explore low cost ways to document land and tree tenure, incentivise reforestation, and connect communities to carbon market investors to incentivise tree replanting.
To achieve this, building trust with communities, land custodians and traditional authorities was crucial, acknowledging context-specific dynamics with diverse interests and motivations. The broader ecosystem enablers, such as the Lands Commission, Forestry Commission, and Office of Administration of Stool Lands, who oversee land administration and interact with the primary communities and development partners and NGOs, are key partners.
The project expects to better understand the datasets from the project, using Kumawu in Ashanti region of Ghana to make a business case for the investment of the carbon credit market.
During the pre-pilot phase, the team:
Gathered insights into current data with communities: Extensive consultation on existing data farmers and traditional authorities have and in what format
Gain buy-in from communities, traditional authorities and mWorkajor stakeholders as there are complex perception about trees in different context
Work on site plans for farmers shifting from informal agreements to more structured approaches
Mock up design of technology to ease assimilation in the local context
Key metrics
2% land registration rate
2.48 million land holders are not registered within the formal land registration system
What we learned
There are complex motivations around trees and farmers in Ghana, with many seeing them as a nuisance. Unregistered trees are often sold to a commercial logger, which dis-incentivises replanting and caring for trees.
Deep dives into similar pilots have shown that digitising records increases investor confidence, but it has also shown that digitising records doesn't necessarily lead to better smallholder outcomes.
There is a siloed treatment of land data and tree registration data, and the hierarchy of decision making on land rights is more centralised than we had expected, giving Chiefs less autonomy than we thought.
What happened next?
The team identified opportunity and motivation within Ghana and the Ghanaian Government to continue the work and to build a Climate Policy Approach.
The team is continuing their work with government and new partners such as COLANDEF, to work with farmers to map trees and to build a future platform that can empower farmers in Ghana.
Read more
Learn more about enhancing land tenure security in carbon credit projects here