Making it a win-win for all: global to local sustainability: international climate change agreements and shea production in Ghana

In recent times, climate change has become one of the most important phenomena and a serious global concern to humans due to the severe threat it poses to life and property. As a result, carbon (C) storage potential of agroforestry systems has been recognized by the Kyoto Protocol as an alternative for mitigating greenhouse gases. Shea (Vitellaria paradoxa) parklands in sub-Saharan Africa provide ingredients to the multi-billion euro confectionery, cosmetic and food industries. These parklands occupy millions of hectares in twenty-one African countries, including Ghana, and serve as excellent sinks for atmospheric carbon. With increasing fears of how these useful trees are in serious danger due to logging and bush burning, there have been urgent calls for the trees to be properly managed and conserved. Farmers in shea-growing communities, in the midst of financial difficulties, manage these parklands using traditional methods. There is however a possibility of the farmers deriving cash benefits from the sale of carbon stored by their shea trees. To be able to assess how much farmers can benefit financially from such carbon credits it is useful to find out how much C shea parklands store as there is limited information on C stocks of the trees in these regions. This research postulates that shea parklands are capable of storing more C, and with the right policies farmers would be willing to continue managing the trees to obtain cash benefits. The research was divided into four components. The first component assessed the C stocks of shea parklands in the Transitional, Guinea and Sudan Savannah agroecological zones of Ghana. In each zone, field and fallow lands were subdivided into new (land under crop cultivation or fallow for 1-5 years), medium (land under crop cultivation or fallow for 6-10 years) and old (land under crop cultivation or fallow for over 10 years). The results indicate that the three zones differed significantly (p