Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
at Jachie, suggest that given control and other requisite resources, women would
register a much greater impact within the agricultural sector, which is widely seen
as holding a fundamental key to poverty reduction and the development process
in developing countries (Todaro, 1989, 2000).
Often, conservation and development (i.e. that process of livelihood improve-
ment) are seen as being at odds with each other, or as mutually antagonistic.
However, the economic ventures (notably honey beekeeping) successfully carried
out in conserved forests and fallow areas, and the successful woodlot ventures,
demonstrate that there are ways of generating from conservation economic
benefits (on top of the ecological ones) for local people, above all the farmers.
Research methodology
By successfully bringing together scientists from a diversity of academic back-
grounds into a functional team, whose collective efforts have resulted in this
topic, the research methodology demonstrates the efficacy of interdisciplinary or
multidisciplinary approaches.
By sustainably teaming up scientists from three universities (the University of
Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and the
University for Development Studies), the research methodology demonstrates the
feasibility of generating positive research synergies through institutional collabo-
ration by networking.
The richness of the information base of the topic underscores the effectiveness
of participatory procedures involving:
•
collaborative work by scientists, farmers, policy-makers, extension agents, and
other environmental stakeholders
•
tapping and building upon traditional farmer resource management knowledge,
especially through expert farmers and farmer associations, all with an initial
focus on demonstration sites, from where positive results may, subsequently,
be upscaled.
Final word
This topic confirms the belief that inherent in smallholder farming communities are
traditional knowledge systems which could usefully serve as a basis for developing
resource management models (Brokensha, Warren, and Werner 1980; Scientific
Advisory Group, 1994; Mammo, 1999). But because official policy tends to ignore
it, this kind of knowledge is endangered. This underscores a need for a special
policy attention to traditional knowledge, especially in regard to its documentation
and nurturing for posterity.
