A communication framework for climatic risk and enhanced green growth in the eastern coast of Ghana

- Coastal development has largely failed to capture the influence of climatic risks.
- National planning that lacks local contexts risk maladaptation of interventions.
- Protecting coastal resources such as mangroves supports mitigation and adaptation benefits.
- Climatic risk communication is a process of non-structural urban coastal resilience building.
- Coastal zone green growth (CZGG) is an entry point to climate smart coastal zone management.

Progresses made in global responses to climate change shows that adaptation is gradually finding its way into development planning, yet delays are generally expected from competing priorities of several sectors, policy and knowledge challenges. To understand these dynamics, a pathway for enhanced climatic risk communication, which is a form of a non-structural adaptation, was analyzed in Ghana's coastal zones. Two learning platforms, the Community-based Risk Screening Tool for Adaptation and Livelihoods (CRiSTAL), and U-Learning (Theory U-Process) were used to engage the state level policy-making process in governing development within coastal zones in the face of increased climatic risks and climate change impacts. Local livelihood priorities showed that a national level development planning framework that excluded local contexts of climatic risks face possible maladaptation. Subsequently the process that was engaged in the local contextualization of climatic risks and development in selected Districts culminated in the consensus framework, Coastal Zone Green Growth (CZGG), informed mostly by concerns over clean energy usage and ecologically compatible use of coastal resources. Therefore the CZGG potentially provides co-benefits for enhanced ecosystem services, livelihoods and adaptation. Thus, it constitutes a denominator for measuring climatic risks and adaptation to potentially inform the policy-making process towards sustainable coastal zone management practices. Except for the desired goals of CZGG being far reaching and futuristic, they overlapped with goals of the adaptation strategies of the local population, which are similar to development goals. Therefore communicating localized contexts of coastal climatic risks of which sea level rise is seen often as remote to planning, could strengthen risk management in integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) and enhance resilience of vulnerable communities. However, this will require the designation of a body which is accustomed to the local issues to facilitate, harmonize and coordinate multi-sector actions and diverse stakeholders' interests for the CZGG to become a reality in contributing to ICZM in Ghana.