The national adaptation planning framework in Ghana aims at addressing climate change impacts in key sectors of the economy such as agriculture in a coordinated and sustainable manner. The AgMIP regional integrated assessment (RIA) framework provides an approach that addresses this aim. The RIA was applied to smallholder systems in Navrongo and then linked to the national level through government policies in the agriculture sector and other allied sectors to assess climate change adaptation under plausible agricultural development trajectories.
 

Climate

Historical data for Ghana from the year 1961 to 2000 clearly shows a progressive rise in temperature and decrease in mean annual rainfall across the country. The average annual temperature has increased by 1°C in the last 30 years. Delayed onset of the season, erratic rainfall pattern, long drought spells and floods are increasing features on the agriculture landscape. It is projected that temperatures will continue to increase, while changes in the direction of rainfall amounts is uncertain across the country.

Economy

Climate change impacts Ghana’s economy where agriculture contributes 54 % of Ghana’s GDP, and accounts for over 40 % of export earnings, and provides over 90 % of the food needs of the country. Agriculture also engages about 52 % of the labour force where it is predominantly smallholder, subsistence and rain-fed thus vulnerable to climate variability and change.

Agricultural production systems

Adaptation and mitigation
The task is to advance strategies for climate change impacts in agriculture that are consistent with ensuring food security, sustaining rural livelihoods and protecting the environment.

Agricultural production
Ghana’s farming systems vary across the country based on agro-ecological zones. In the forest zone, tree crops are central with cocoa, oil palm, coffee and rubber dominating and are grown as cash crops. The food crops in this area are mainly inter-cropped mixtures of maize, plantain, cocoyam and cassava. The middle belt is characterized by mixed or sole cropping of maize, legumes, cocoyam or yam, with tobacco and cotton being the predominant cash crops. Cotton and tobacco are also important in the northern sector, where the food crops are mainly sorghum, maize, millet, cowpeas, groundnuts and yam. Rice is important in all the zones. Livestock production is a major feature in Ghana’s agriculture landscape. Domestic livestock meat and milk production amounted to 66,283 metric tons and 13,700 metric tons respectively in the year 2000.

The government of Ghana has a number of well-crafted policies and initiatives that set out national priorities toward low carbon agriculture and climate resilient development pathway. These include: The Coordinated Program of Economic and Social Policies (2017-2024), the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA II); Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ); Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy (FASDEP II), National Climate Smart Agriculture and Food Security Action Plan, Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) among others. However, the implementation of these policies to inure to the benefit of the citizenry are often challenged by inadequate funding. Inadequate institutional or intersectorial coordination also hampers effective utilization of resources with the tendency of funds to be redirected to address issues in other sectors. For example, funds earmarked for district assemblies to resource sectors at the local level are often used for other activities at the national level. There is also inconsistency in the enforcement of laws to ensure environmental sustainability, leading to the degradation of biodiversity, with implications for the resource base of farmers. Investments in infrastructure are also limited, with inadequate attention to gender equity. Thus, the system is bequeathed with low productivity, slow economic growth, poverty, and food insecurity, particularly among smallholder farmers.

Together with stakeholders, three Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs), were co-developed to assess the vulnerability of farmers to projected future climate change (see Figure 2). The RAPs envisaged the evolution of the agricultural landscape under each of the three agricultural pathways. The evolution will be influenced by the level of investments (government and private partnerships) in the agricultural sector and in climate policy. The scenarios development process is supposed to enable policy makers and practitioners to visualize the implications of their policies on the sector and provide insight to support policy decisions for climate-change adaptation planning processes. The three RAPs or scenarios are: (i) a business as usual, (ii) a sustainable development (iii) a fossil fuel driven development. Further information on the national RAPs and how it links to the regional scale can be found in Figure 3 and the November 2021 policy brief (MacCarthy et al. 2021c).

Figure 2: Engagement processes for scenario development and adaptation planning.

Figure 3: Summaries of the 3 plausible scenarios co-identified with national stakeholders.

To reduce the effect of climate change on the households in the future (2030-2035), an adaptation package co-identified by stakeholders was tested using Regional Integrated Assessment (RIA) methodology. For three simulated crops (maize, peanut and sorghum) the adaptation packages were based on the adoption of improved heat tolerant seed varieties.

To ensure that households can acquire these improved varieties, the seeds were subsidized. For rice, systems rice intensification (SRI) was used as an adaptation while investments in livestock feed supplementation was identified to address adaptation in livestock production. For the adaptation for the non-simulated crops and livestock, the adaptation package was designed based on literature.

The use of the improved crop varieties resulted in yield increases across all three crops and scenarios with the highest yield gains simulated for the peanuts compared to the cereals, while no consistent trend was simulated across the scenarios (see Figure 4).

The introduction of the adaptation package resulted in at least 60% of farmers adopting the package leading to an increase in the net farm returns across all three future scenarios (see Figure 5). This resulted in a decline in poverty and food insecurity across scenarios.

Figure 5: Simulated impact of adaptation on the net farm returns of farmers under 3 plausible scenarios in Navrongo, Ghana.

Historical maize yield and change in maize yield in 2050