Power and influence mapping in Ghana's agricultural adaptation policy regime

Abstract

Debates around the design and content of climate change adaptation policies are shaped, in part, by the power and influence of actors within an adaptation regime. This paper applies a power-mapping technique, Multilevel Stakeholder Influence Mapping (MSIM), to stakeholders in Ghana's agricultural adaptation policy regime. The method provides a quantitative influence score and visual map for actor groups active-in or affected-by the policy process, from the differentiated perspectives of national, regional, and local-level respondents. MSIM, as applied here, seeks to determine the underlying power structure of the adaptation regime and provides insight in to two key power-laden themes: stakeholder participation and multilevel institutional design. Results indicate that when taken collectively (the views of national, regional and local respondents combined) Ghana's adaptation regime is considered bipolar and elite-centred in its power distribution. A distinguishable 'adaptation establishment' or dominant group of power holders made up of technical government and international agencies can be identified. Meanwhile, political groups, the private sector, civil society, and universities are considered to wield substantially less power in the regime. Differentiated perspectives (i.e. national, regional or local respondents alone) reveal that several potential cross-level bridging institutions are not considered influential at all operational levels. Farmers, traditional authorities, and the District Assembly, for example, are all considered highly influential from the perspective of local-level respondents, but their counterpart agencies at the national level are not considered influential by policymakers there. Contrary to the hyper-politicized nature of climate change adaptation at international levels, Ghana's policy regime would benefit from increased participation from political agents, as well as from traditional authorities and farmers. These actor groups can help reverse the a-political nature of the adaptation regime, improve power pluralism across actor groups and levels, and facilitate cross-level cooperation between formal and informal institutions crucial to adaptation success.

The evolution of empirical adaptation research in the global South from 2010 to 2020

“…These variously explore the interaction between formal and informal governance (for example government compared to traditional leadership) and formal governance and informal institutions (e.g. Ensor et al, 2015;Sova et al, 2017); as well as between institutions and individuals (e.g. Kuruppu & Liverman, 2011), policy and practice (e.g.…”

Applying the robust adaptation planning (RAP) framework to Ghana’s agricultural climate change adaptation regime

“…In particular, for the RAP application we selected the Lawra District in Upper West Ghana because it is home to our extensive study of the regions and several CCAFS baseline study sites (Chaudhury et al 2017 ; Naab et al 2011 ; Sova et al 2016 ). Farming is particularly challenging in this part of Ghana due to the low socioeconomic development and adverse environmental and climatic conditions, (Antwi-Agyei et al 2012 ; Etwire et al 2013 ).…”

“…Much of the recent work on adaptation has focused either at broad policy and governance levels (Sandström and Rova 2009 ; Stein et al 2011 ; Vignola et al 2013 ), or at highly context-specific local levels through local case studies (Reid et al 2007 ; Schipper et al 2014 ). Actually adaptation studies have seldom focused across levels (Sova et al 2015 , 2016 ). Even when actors and adaptation actions are identified, it has been challenging to organise the necessary communication and implementation across levels and scales (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003 ; Hill and Engle 2013 ).…”

The framing of power in climate change adaptation research

“…Power over was fortified where participation was limited to elites and a few representatives, or resembled tokenism. As Sova (2017) found "If 'highly relevant' stakeholders operate within an institutional environment where they are merely consulted on predetermined policy then pre-existing power relations between actor groups may be reinforced and perpetuated." Similar findings have been noted in other studies (Collins & Ison, 2009;Newsham et al, 2018).…”