Furthering cooperation between people and institutions for sustainable management of natural resources: a study of Goaso forest district in Ghana

This paper is based on a case study of the Goaso Forest District in Ghana. The study explored the application of multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) to a key challenge in the coming years of effectively addressing the diverse and conflicting demands now being made on Ghana's forests, while ensuring that future generations have the potential to use the same resources of comparable quality. Differences of knowledge, interests, expectations and priorities often obscured in conventional policy dialogue in natural resource utilization and management, but which do provide deeper explanation of conflict, have been revealed. This brings up the need for careful and transparent consideration of the ways different stakeholders understand conservation of natural resources in strategies to improve forest management. Such a consideration is essential to effective cooperation between people and institutions for sustainable forest management. Journal of Science and Technology Vol. 25(2) 2005: 120-130