Department of Forest Resources Technology, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.
Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Environ Manage. 2021 Nov;68(5):738-754. doi: 10.1007/s00267-021-01455-0. Epub 2021 Mar 22.
Although deforestation rates are declining, protected forest areas remain under threat. While the importance of spatialized ('mapped') community knowledge for conservation planning is acknowledged in scientific literature, the integration of such knowledge in forest governance and conservation planning remains scarce, particularly in Ghana. This paper aims to make clear how participatory spatial knowledge tools and geographic information systems can be used to assess the threats to forest conservation in Ghana's high forest zone. The results show that holders of spatial community-embedded knowledge not only sketch-mapped the location and spatial distribution of the threats to forest conservation in the forest reserves, but also provided information on the actors they perceived to be causing such threats. Such information is not available in forest inventories conducted by the responsible government agencies, but is needed to focus conservation strategies and make them more effective. Maps with the anticipated condition of the forest in 10 years' time furthermore provided insights which can help governance actors to deal with the underlying drivers of forest degradation. This suggests that local spatialized knowledge needs to be integrated into the institutional arrangements for the governance of forested landscapes, and that such governance cannot be effective without the inclusion of local people's knowledge. Due consideration is however to be given to the conditions that ensure that spatialized knowledge production and its use in landscape management decision-making occurs in an inclusive manner.
尽管森林砍伐率正在下降，但受保护的森林地区仍面临威胁。尽管科学文献已经认识到空间化（“映射”）社区知识对于保护规划的重要性，但这种知识在森林治理和保护规划中的整合仍然很少，特别是在加纳。本文旨在阐明如何使用参与式空间知识工具和地理信息系统来评估加纳热带雨林区森林保护面临的威胁。研究结果表明，拥有空间社区嵌入知识的人不仅绘制了森林保护区内森林保护威胁的位置和空间分布，还提供了他们认为造成这些威胁的行为者的信息。这种信息在负责政府机构进行的森林清查中是不可用的，但需要集中保护战略并使其更有效。此外，绘制的未来 10 年内森林预期状况的地图提供了一些见解，可以帮助治理行为者应对森林退化的根本驱动因素。这表明，需要将本地化的空间知识纳入森林景观治理的制度安排中，并且如果不包括当地人的知识，这种治理就无法有效实施。然而，应该充分考虑确保以包容的方式进行空间知识生产及其在景观管理决策中的应用的条件。
