Governance of restoration and institutions: Working with Ghana's Community Resource Management Areas

- Working through institutions at the landscape level can be one way to enable restoration.
- Unresolved governance issues within these institutions may hinder their restoration objectives.
- Action learning is one way through which groups can resolve governance issues.

Restoration is occurring worldwide in a variety of landscapes. In Ghana, Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs) are employed by the government and communities to address participatory management outside protected areas, including a focus on forest landscape restoration. Recent research in one restoration-oriented CREMA in western Ghana revealed internal governance issues including accountability and transparency which reduced the CREMA's ability to facilitate restoration on cocoa farms. Since then, through action learning, the community has been working to improve governance. This case study details that process and shows how working with CREMAs on these governance issues could enable restoration to occur. Lessons for policy and practice are presented.