Farmers’ willingness to pay for environmental services on farmlands and implications for resource governance in Sene East District, Ghana

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JUNE, 2016
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Abstract
Farmers’ ability to provide environmental services on farmlands is undermined by poor governance of agro-ecosystems. This study analyses farmers’ willingness to pay for environmental services through integrating timber trees on farmlands and the required institutional structures and governance arrangements to support the integration. The study was conducted in the Sene East District of Ghana, where a total of 177 farmers were selected from six communities using stratified and simple random sampling. Informal interview was conducted using a structured questionnaire to gather information on farmers’ willingness to pay for environmental services and other bio-data by means of the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). It was found that Forest Service Division (FSD) hardly carries out its monitoring and supervisory roles in the study area and majority of farmers set fire at the roots of timber trees as opposed to weeding around fruit trees. The study identified tree ownership problems, activities of illegal chainsaw operators, lack of accountability in timber revenue disbursement and weak policies to be the major reasons why farmers destroy timber trees on farmlands. It was observed from the study that, 59% of farmers were willing to pay for provision of environmental services through integrating timber trees on farmlands. However, the multiple regression results show that gender, age, educational status, access to land and farmers’ perception of climate change are significant variables influencing farmers’ willingness to pay for provision of environmental services. Based on the above results, the study suggest that favourable land tenure systems, equitable benefit sharing, accountability in timber revenue disbursement, enforceable forestry laws and policies are vital to the provision of environmental services on farmlands as well as good governance of agro-ecosystems. Keywords: Agro-ecosystem, environmental services, willingness-to-pay, institutional structures, resource governance, REDD+.
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A thesis submitted to The Department of Silviculture and Forest Management, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy Natural Resource and Environmental Governance.
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