Presented by Peter Cronkleton (Senior Scientist, CIFOR) at "5th Annual FLARE Meeting", August 23-25, 2019, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

1. 5th Annual FLARE Meeting
August 23-25, 2019
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Customary tenure, gender and access to
forests and trees in Ghana and Burkina Faso

2. Customary tenure is a key
component of the forest-
farm interface
• How do customary tenure systems
affect access to forest and trees for
men and women in the Sahel?
• How do these systems vary?
• What are the implications for
livelihoods and resource management?
Analyzing customary tenure systems is
a challenge:
• Complex
• Informal
• Opaque
• Evolving

3. The WAFFI Project
Analyzed multi-village
landscapes in Burkina Faso
and Ghana
Twelve village sites
• The Nobéré commune in
the Zoundwéogo Province in
Burkina Faso
• The Kassena-Nankana
West District in the Upper
East region of Ghana

4. Data collection with
mixed methods
Focus group interviews
• 58 Focus groups
• 793 villagers (44% female)
Participatory Action Research
Systematic stratified household
survey
• Ghana
• 128 men
• 140 women
• Burkina Faso
• 106 Men
• 98 women

5. Tenure systems at sites
Ghana: Legal pluralism
Property types:
• Customary system allocates
individual access on community
lands
• Parkland ‘commons’
• State owned reserve areas, titling
in per-urban areas
Customary landownership in Kasena
areas
• Land priest (Tigatu)
• Landlords – patriarchs of families
with de facto ownership of land in
customary system
Burkina Faso: Decentralized
system
Property types:
• Rural private individual lands
• Land of local authorities
• State lands with sectoral categories
(i.e. forest and wildlife areas,
pastoral areas)
Customary landownership in Mossi
areas
• Land chief (Chef de terre)
• Landlord - holder of lineage or
inherited land

6. Tree tenure
• Officially forests are national
patrimony
• ‘Off reserve’ trees treated as
national patrimony but
authorized use allowed (in
theory)
• In customary system trees
on farms controlled by
landowner
Women’s tenure rights
• Legally granted equitable
access to land
• Customary system does not
grant ownership, women
access through male relative
Tree Tenure
• Trees property of land owner
• Planting trees can bestow
customary ownership
• Several official mechanisms for
local forest management
• Specific ownership rules for
valued trees such as néré
(Parkia biglobosa)
Women’s tenure rights
• Legally granted equitable access
to land
• Customary system does not
grant ownership, women access
through male relative
Tenure systems at sites

7. Identifying access rights
in farming behavior

8. Nature of rights claims

9. The role of tree products

10. Primary source of income

11. • Shea often described
as a “women’s tree
crop”
• Shea is a crucial
income source for
women at landscapes
• Men do harvest shea
for commercial
purposes
Shea
(Vitellaria paradoxa)
Tree product income

12. Tree product income

13. Shifting access
to shea income
• In Ghana, historic
stigma to men selling
shea in markets
• Key changes: Price
increased and buyers
purchasing shea in
villages
• Men claim greater
share of shea on farm
• Women pushed to
degraded distant shea

14. Conclusions
• Smallholders often occupy forest-farm interface –
difficult to separate agricultural and forest landuse
• Formal and customary tenure overlap to create
complex gender differentiated systems shaping
access to and benefits from forest resources
• It is a challenge for outsiders to understand these
systems
• However, it is crucial that policy makers and
development practicioners have a better
understanding of how these systems function and
vary locally

15. Thank you
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