Wolfram Laube

University of Bonn

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Eva Youkhana

University of Bonn

Benjamin Schraven

German Institute of Development and Sustainability

Martha Adimabuno Awo

University of Ghana

Nick van de Giesen

Delft University of Technology

Boubacar Barry

Bursa Technical University

B. D. Barry

Ignace Deen Hospital

Paul L. G. Vlek

University of Bonn

Charles Rodgers

Asian Development Bank

BK Kortatsi

International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering

Murali Krishna Gumma

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics

Cooperative Institutions

University of Bonn

International Water Management Institute

Water Resources Commission of Ghana

University for Development Studies

West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use

University of Ghana

International Water Management Institute

Delft University of Technology

Burkina Faso Ministry of the Environment, Green Economy, and Climate Change

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

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Agroecology and resilience of smallholder food security: a systematic review

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems (2023)

Gilbert Dagunga Michael Ayamga Wolfram Laube Isaac Gershon Kodwo Ansah Lukas Kornher

Multiple covariate shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia–Ukraine conflict, and pre-existing climate shocks pose serious threats to smallholder livelihoods. The cascading effects of these multiple shocks, including rising prices of fertilizers and food imports, have rekindled interest in the call for a policy shift toward agroecology. Agroecology in this study is defined as a set of practices based on ecological principles of diversity, synergy, and nutrient cycling of agroecosystems, which are capable of enhancing the resilience of smallholder food security while providing ecosystem services. Proponents of the agroecology paradigm argue that it is more sustainable and resilience-enhancing. Yet, the nexus among agroecology, resilience, and food security is less understood in the literature. Therefore, this study aimed to review the existing literature to examine how agroecology could enhance the resilience and food security of smallholders. A systematic literature search was performed on Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed based on three keywords, viz. agroecology, resilience, and food security. Following the 2020 preferred reporting items on systematic review and meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines for systematic literature review, 47 articles were retained for the final review. The results provide empirical evidence that supports the potential of agroecological practices in enhancing the resilience and food security of smallholders. This study proposes a framework that links agroecology, resilience, and food security, showing the interplay among all three dimensions of agroecology—the science, policy, and practices—relevant for successful agroecological transitioning or transformation while identifying gaps for further research.

Agroecology

Resilience

Agroecosystem

10.3389/fsufs.2023.1267630

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Citations (5)

GLOBAL SHEA NUT COMMODITY CHAINS AND POVERTY ERADICATION IN NORTHERN GHANA: MYTH OR REALITY?

UDS International Journal of Development (2015)

Wolfram Laube

The increase in shea production, accompanied by the shea market restructuring, is often portrayed as an engine for rural transformation that will help end endemic poverty in Northern Ghana. In order to assess the actual impact and future promises of smallholder integration into the global shea commodity chain, this study undertook qualitative and quantitative research on shea pickers in the Upper East and Upper West regions. It looked at access to shea trees and nuts, forms and levels of production, marketing patterns and prices, as well as the local benefits from the shea trade. The research results show that the sale of shea nuts does provide a welcome source of income for rural women and poor rural households in Northern Ghana at a time of the year when resources are scarce. The sale of shea nuts therefore mitigates poverty to a considerable degree. But the findings also suggest that the low level of production and rather minuscule income from the shea nut trade cannot easily be raised by most shea pickers, as they face a limited labor supply and a reduction in access to shea trees. This makes it unlikely that the future of the shea nut trade will be a decisive factor in widespread poverty eradication, even if the price of shea nuts rose above current exploitative levels. This is also reflected in the behavior of rural women who tend to disengage from shea picking when more profitable economic activities such as independent farming, wage labor, or business opportunities arise. KEYWORDS: Global commodity chains, Northern Ghana, Poverty eradication, Shea nut trade, Smallholders

Commodity chain

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Citations (17)

Temporal water productivity of tomato irrigated from a small reservoir and hand-dug-wells in dry season cropping in the Upper East Region, Ghana.

Makarius Mdemu Wolfram Laube Boubacar Barry

Dry season

Water reservoir

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Impact of Changing Seasonal Rainfall Patterns on Rainy-Season Crop Production in the Guinea Savannah of West Africa

2013 Annual Meeting, August 4-6, 2013, Washington, D.C. (2013)

Marc F. Müller Safiétou Sanfo Wolfram Laube

Rainy-season farming is a major source of income for the rural population in the Guinea Savannah zone of West Africa. Farming systems in the region are dominated by rain-fed production of cereals, but include also leguminous crops and oilseeds. A recent World Bank study has identified high potentials for competitive agricultural production and agriculture-led growth in the Guinea Savannah zones of Sub-Saharan Africa. This optimistic outlook is conditional on appropriate investment strategies, policy reforms, and institutional changes. Furthermore, the World Bank warns that global climate change could pose a potential constraint for agricultural growth due to likely reductions in rainfall levels and significant increases in rainfall variability. This could lead to serious dry spells and a drop of crop yields. The study regions are the departement Atakora in Benin, the region Sud-Ouest in Burkina Faso, and the Upper East Region in Ghana. Climate projections and trend estimates for these regions show very heterogeneous results for level and variability of monthly rainfall patterns. Therefore, we want to investigate which potential future developments pose the greater threat for agricultural production in the study regions. We develop a set of regional agricultural supply models, each representing 10-12 cropping activities and roughly 150.000 ha of agricultural area. We distinguish two stages of crop production: The planting stage from April to June and the yield formation stage between June and November. Preliminary results suggest that drought events during the planting stage have a more severe impact on the output of individual crops than drought events during the second stage. In contrast, the impact on total farm revenues appears to be more prominent during the second stage, when farmers have a limited capability to adjust their production plan. A clear if not surprising result is the larger vulnerability of crops with growth cycles ranging from the very beginning to the very end of the rainy season. The observed diversity of cropping activities serves the purpose to reduce the vulnerability to adverse rainfall events within a certain range. However, some extreme events are associated with very poor harvests of specific cash crops, thus severely affecting the income of the farming sector. A comprehensive picture will be obtained once the climate change scenarios are completed and the model results are tested and validated for various settings.

Wet season

Dry season

10.22004/ag.econ.150412

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Citations (2)

Changing aspirations, cultural models of success, and social mobility in northern Ghana

Wolfram Laube

Social Mobility

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Citations (24)

What Makes Kofi Run? Changing Aspirations and Cultural Models of Success in Northern Ghana

AnthropoChildren (2016)

Wolfram Laube

In northern Ghana, many young people, but also parents, teachers, and local authorities, believe that formal education and professional careers provide the only effective means for the rural youth to get ahead. This paper shows how aspirations have been historically changing and analyses the extent to which new career pathways lead to upward social mobility. Results from qualitative and quantitative research show how weak public education and a lack of funding as well as employment opportunities frustrate local aspirations and undermine upward social mobility. However, more stable cultural models of personal success based on an interesting mix of local social values and developmental discourses afford the marginalized youth avenues to social recognition and status.

Social Mobility

10.25518/2034-8517.2484

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Citations (4)

Mapping Climate Services for Disaster Risk Management: A Systematic Review and Research Gaps from a Policy Process Perspective

American Journal of Climate Change (2024)

Aboubacar Issaka Ousman Gaoh Wolfram Laube Georges Abbevi Abbey Moussa Waongo

Climate services (CS) are crucial for mitigating and managing the impacts and risks associated with climate-induced disasters. While evidence over the past decade underscores their effectiveness across various domains, particularly agriculture, to maximize their potential, it is crucial to identify emerging priority areas and existing research gaps for future research agendas. As a contribution to this effort, this paper employs the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology to review the state-of-the-art in the field of climate services for disaster risk management. A comprehensive search across five literature databases combined with a snowball search method using ResearchRabbit was conducted and yielded 242 peer-reviewed articles, book sections, and reports over 2013-2023 after the screening process. The analysis revealed flood, drought, and food insecurity as major climate-related disasters addressed in the reviewed literature. Major climate services addressed included early warning systems, (sub)seasonal forecasts and impact-based warnings. Grounded in the policy processes' theoretical perspective, the main focus identified and discussed three prevailing policy-oriented priority areas: 1) development of climate services, 2) use-adoption-uptake, and 3) evaluation of climate services. In response to the limitations of the prevalent supply-driven and top-down approach to climate services promotion, co-production emerges as a cross-cutting critical aspect of the identified priority areas. Despite the extensive research in the field, more attention is needed, particularly pronounced in the science-policy interface perspective, which in practice bridges scientific knowledge and policy decisions for effective policy processes. This perspective offers a valuable analytical lens as an entry point for further investigation. Hence, future research agendas would generate insightful evidence by scrutinizing this critical aspect given its importance to institutions and climate services capacity, to better understand intricate facets of the development and the integration of climate services into disaster risk management.

10.4236/ajcc.2024.132016

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Citations (0)

Knowledge Politics in Environmental Conflicts: A Case from Brazil

Gestión y Ambiente (2018)

Aline Rose Barbosa Pereira Wolfram Laube

Following large environmental conflicts and disasters, economic endeavors -particular large-scale investments in mining or hydropower- are nowadays subjected to rigorous environmental law and regulations. The application of rules and regulations takes place in environmental administration and courts and includes environmental impact assessments (EIAs, and does not correspond to the identical English acronym), licensing processes and litigation in court. Within these contexts, decision making is supposed to be based on rational reasoning and purportedly impartial scientific knowledge and information. Thus, citizens’ rights in resource conflicts and the effective enforcement of these rights in administrative, judicial, and political contestation become highly dependent on knowledge and information and the ways it is produced, interpreted, and valued in the interaction between people affected and investors, lays and experts, bureaucrats, legal practitioners and citizens. Political contestation becomes seemingly a technical dispute. This paper bases on a qualitative study of the conflicts surrounding the establishment of the large-scale iron-ore mining project Minas-Rio, in Conceição do Mato Dentro, Minas Gerais, Brazil, conducted in 2014-2015. It describes the problematic nature of the production of information and knowledge in a given political-economic context and the contestations surrounding the validity of apparently scientific results as they emerged alongside the environmental licensing process. Environmental studies and their technical evaluations are based on questionable assumptions and often lack accurate baseline data. The deficiency of public resources for independent investigation makes the environmental agencies dependent on services and information provided by mining companies. Apart from this form of collaboration, the prioritization of allegedly scientific “expert” knowledge, career trajectories of agencies’ personnel, and pressure by pro-mining politicians leads to the uncritical adoption of data, information and knowledge provided by the company and/or the consultancy firms employed by them. At the same time, information given by the people affected and environmentalists becomes sidelined. Thereby, the basic environmental and citizen rights, as the rights to information concerning the environment and to participation in licensing processes, guaranteed in the Brazilian constitution and environmental legislation, become ineffective.

10.15446/ga.v21n2supl.77761

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Citations (2)

Climate Change Adaptation, Education, and Rural Transformation in Northern Ghana. Moving Beyond an Agricultural Focus

Springer eBooks (2016)

Wolfram Laube

Vision

10.1007/978-3-319-31499-0_8

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Citations (2)

Erratic rains and erratic markets: Environmental change, economic globalisation and the expansion of shallow groundwater irrigation in West Africa

Wolfram Laube Martha Adimabuno Awo Benjamin Schraven

Climate change and land degradation have considerably altered the conditions for rain-fed agriculture in Northern Ghana. Furthermore, population pressure has led to continuous farming of available agricultural lands and thus caused land degradation. Crop failure and decreasing yields that result from these environmental changes have caused further impoverishment of what was already Ghana’s poorest region. In the past, youth often opted for migration to Ghana’s wealthier south, in order to supplement meagre agricultural livelihoods. However, since the mid-1990s many farmers have started to develop the shallow groundwater irrigation (SGI) capacities of their home region for vegetable gardening. This development has helped a great deal to ameliorate poverty and to reverse rural-urban migration. However, while the irrigators were initially able to profit from the development of good road access to northern Ghana and an increasing demand for vegetables in Ghana’s south, many now frequently meet with market failure. While the sale of fresh tomatoes is met with stiff competition from small-scale farmers from neighbouring Burkina Faso, Ghana’s market is flooded with cheap tomato paste from countries where the production of tomatoes is highly subsidised. Global and regional competition has started to render SGI, developed as a means to locally adapt to environmental change, increasingly risky. As markets become as unreliable as the rains, Ghanaian farmers now face the uphill task of dealing simultaneously with global climate change and globalisation.

Environmental degradation

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Citations (97)