Notions of resource conservation historically gained little attention in Ghanaian agriculture, with the prominent paradigm promoting growth at all costs. This webinar considers how far approaches prioritising productivity and sustainability may overlap in the sector, and the potential role of policy, market and practical innovations.
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There has been limited historical policy and practice attention to environmental sustainability in Ghanaian agriculture sector. The dominant paradigm poses sustainability as a matter of staying afloat financially. More recently, farmers have begun to feel the negative effects of limited attention to resource sustainability, in weaker soils, scarcity of household resources, and pollution, and policy attention to practices such as conservation agriculture has emerged.
This webinar builds on our previous events to discuss whether there is any common ground between an agricultural paradigm centred around financial profit and external inputs, and one that prioritises resource conservation and ecosystem services. We focus particularly on the role of ‘innovations’, in a broad sense, in bridging this gap. Simultaneously, we will interrogate what is considered an innovation, and the interests of those promoting products, practices and services as innovations.
We ask:
- Which policy, practice and market innovations may act to disincentivise environmentally destructive behaviour?
- What are the trade-offs and learning points?
- Can actors mobilise innovations while leaving ideology behind?
- Is there a difference between how indigenous and external innovation treats sustainability.
- What is the role of different stakeholders – practitioners, governors, private sector, activists and researchers?
There’ll be a particular emphasis on Ghana, and reflection on how the Ghanaian experience compares to elsewhere on the continent, and whether there are more general learnings.
Chair
- Dr. Abukari Wumbei, University for Development Studies, Ghana.
Speakers
- Prof Irene S. Egyir, University of Ghana;
- Abu Tia Jambedu, Millar Institute for Transdisciplinary and Development Studies, Ghana;
- Nbuwak Peace Yashim, Coventry University, UK;
- Dr. Niagia Santuah, Millar Institute for Transdisciplinary and Development Studies, Ghana.
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