Incorporating social transformation analysis into development plans: Role of the REACH-STR project

According to 2016 research data, Ghana ranks 151 out of 188 countries for per capita Greenhouse Gasses (GHGs) emissions, contributing to only about 0.07% of global emissions.

The nation is, however, highly vulnerable to climate change, ranking 101 out of 181 countries but with a higher score for levels of readiness, ranking 119 out of 192 countries in the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (NDGAIN) index.

This is contained in the Resilience Against Climate Change Social Transformation Research and Policy Advocacy (REACH-STR) policy research series number three, titled “Ghana’s resilience against climate change: Social transformation and the determinants of vulnerability,” published online in February 2022.

Areas of Impact
In 2015, Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that the country’s vulnerability to climate change and variability is largely felt in six priority economic sectors, namely agriculture, health, water, coastal areas, energy, and cities and infrastructure.

According to research, these sectors are impacted due to the nation’s geographic location, that is, low adaptive capacity (especially in northern Ghana), high reliance on agriculture for livelihoods, and huge dependence on hydropower for electricity generation.

The changing climate poses threats to national development; thus, a better understanding of climate change risks and vulnerabilities will support efforts to more effectively adapt to the impacts, it said.

Impact on Northern Ghana
Most communities that are highly vulnerable to climate change are extremely poor; an example is the Upper West Region of Ghana, which has the highest incidence of poverty and is also the most climate-vulnerable region in the country.

Increasing evidence of rising temperature, shifting rainfall patterns, increased incidence of dry spells, droughts, and floods indicates that Northern Ghana faces the challenge of climate change, thereby making the region vulnerable as it puts a lot of pressure on natural resources and livelihoods of people in the area.

Meanwhile, Dr. William Quarmine, Regional Researcher—Development Economist, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), noted that society is always changing, and some of these changes are significant or transformative and left both positive and negative outcomes that affected development efforts, especially towards building resilience against climate change.

“We need a way to go about our development activities to build resilience against climate change,” he stated.

Government of Ghana Response
In responding to the climate crisis, the Government of Ghana launched the European Union-funded Ghana Agriculture Programme (EUGAP) Resilience Against Climate Change (REACH) project to aid productive investment for

Agriculture in the Savannah Ecological Zones.

The project has three components, namely, the Market Orientated Agriculture Programme (MOAP), Infrastructure (Roads, Water Management), and Resilience Against Climate Change—Social Transformation Research and Policy Advocacy (REACH-STR) project.

The REACH-STR Project
Dr. Charity Osei-Amponsah, Senior Regional Researcher—Social Transformation, explained that the REACH-STR project examined social transformation from the perspectives of gender, migration, and climate resilience.

The goal, she said, had been to support the establishment of effective pathways to sustainable social transformation in northern Ghana, while the objective was to have a more inclusive and sustainable economic growth policy and programming achieved in northern Ghana by 2025.

Core issues to be addressed by the project, she said, included a deeper understanding of the concept of social transformation; developing methods to capture present and future transformations; and building tools to help include social transformation analysis into development action.

Others are strengthening the capacities of development professionals to include social transformation analysis into development action and support the formulation of policies that are founded on social transformation perspectives.

Understanding Social Transformation
Dr. Osei Amponsah explained that social transformation was the persistent structural changes in the economic and social relations that surround individuals, households, and communities.

According to her, social transformation occurred when one or more of these events took place, including some elements of society either integrating or disintegrating from each other; new elements (of different or same nature) were introduced into society, either as stand-alone components or integrated with existing ones, and old components previously introduced into society were removed.

Capacity Building
Dr. William Quarmine, Regional Researcher—Development Economist, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), noted that up to 40 district-level Planners, Gender Desk Officers and Directors of Agriculture from Upper West and Sawla-Tuna-Kalba have been trained on social transformation analysis in annual knowledge and learning events from 2020 to 2023.

He noted that trained participants have gained more in-depth understanding of social transformation and were more inclined towards incorporating social transformation analysis into their activities.

Project Scholarships
Dr. Quarmine revealed that a total of 15 Masters and four PhD students across partner universities were offered scholarships and stipends to study social transformation and apply it in their various theses, out of which eight have already graduated.

Additional Project Achievements
Dr. Quarmine said the project developed a social transformation approach to Research for Development (R4D) with tools and trained over 70 development practitioners in 12 districts from the Upper West and Savannah Regions in social transformation analysis.

Others, he added, were consistent inputs into Ghana’s annual CoP negotiation since 2020; developed key knowledge database—policy briefs, journal articles, research reports; and submitted tools for consideration in the next development of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) guidelines for Medium Term Development Plans (MTDP).

Social Transformation Framework
Dr. Quarmine noted that since the project's inception in 2019, it had championed and successfully co-developed social transformation research for development frameworks and tools in addition to other achievements.

He explained that the social transformation research for development framework was an analytical tool that provided development officers with a better understanding of how societies could be transformed to respond to the practical challenges arising from climate change.

“Development Officers have accepted and adopted the framework, saying by utilising this framework, planners and decision-makers can develop interventions that encourage positive developmental transformation while minimising negative consequences,” he said.

Alignment with NDA’s commitment
Dr. Sulemana Abdulai, the Board Chairman of the Northern Development Authority (NDA), said the REACH-STR project was well aligned with the NDA’s commitment to leverage learning and to plan interventions from a social transformation perspective as well as to develop strategies that promoted transformation and climate resilience.

“The EU-funded REACH-STR project therefore feeds into the broader efforts to identify alternative pathways for developing tools, which can be used by planners to create transformative interventions,” he said.

The NDA Board Chairman therefore lauded REACH-STR for developing, testing, and fine-tuning appropriate tools to support the work of planners and development practitioners in the region as they work tirelessly to build resilience against climate change.

“We need to look at how lessons from REACH-STR can be shared with projects such as the Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion Project (SOCO), Planting for Food and Jobs 2.0 (PFJ 2.0), and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH), among others that are all aimed at strengthening community resilience to climate change,” he said.

Voices from Government
Dr. Hafiz Bin Salih, Upper East Regional Minister, commended IWMI for developing the framework and urged development and training development planners to understand and adopt it.

Mr. Stephen Yakubu, Upper West Regional Minister, lauded REACH-STR’s strategic partnership, saying through such partnership, development planners could access the much-needed technical support, knowledge sharing, and funding that would strengthen their efforts.

Mr. Sulemana Ewuntomah Abudu, the Northern Regional Coordinating Director, commended REACH-STR for taking steps to not only disseminate the framework and related tools across other regions but also assure them of their support in the area of capacity building to aid adoption.

Mr. Bilattey Bimi, Wa East District Planning Officer, affirmed that the social transformation approach/analysis was effective, reduced time and cost in plan preparation, and enhanced responsiveness and robustness.

“Development action that neglects transformation is headed towards failure,” he emphasised.

When you plan with social transformation, then you plan to touch and improve lives,” Mr. Godfred Bamba, Builsa North District Coordinating Director, noted.

He lauded the idea of mainstreaming social transformation into the guidelines of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and called for conscious efforts to build the capacity of stakeholders both at the regional and district levels.