Resources – Ghana

This page provides information to Civil Society Organisations and other actors working on forests, natural resources and community rights related issues in Ghana, and is continuously updated and improved upon.

We work with national lawyers to provide legal support in Ghana. One of the main ways we work with civil society is through a Legal Working Group – an informal and dynamic working group within which we discuss, prioritise, correct and progressively build upon the legal information contained on this webpage.

Our work has mainly focused on forests, but increasingly we will be including other natural resource sectors as forests are not stand-alone resources and their fate is often linked with laws and decisions from other sectors, such as agriculture, mining etc.

Legal briefings to support forest governance

The following five briefings each focus on the legal protection of a key right that can support civil society and local community representatives in their work relating to natural resources and community rights.

1. ‘Ownership and use rights of Forest Natural Resources’: An overview of the rights local communities have to own and use land and forest resources, and whether there are any gaps in the legal protection of their ownership and use rights.
2. ‘The Distribution of Benefits Derived from Forest Resources’: An overview of the rights of local communities to share in the benefits from exploitation of forests on their lands and whether there are any gaps in the legal protection of this right to share in the benefits.
3. ‘The Right to Access Information in the Forest sector’: An overview of the rights local communities and civil society have to access to information in relation to forest governance and whether there are any gaps in the legal protection of the right to access information.
4. ‘Participation of local communities and civil society in the Forest sector’: An overview of the rights of local communities and civil society to participate in forest and wildlife governance and whether there are any gaps in the legal protection of this right to participate.
5. ‘Access to Justice in Ghana’: This document aims to provide clarity on the different offences, penalties, procedures for redress within the Forestry and wildlife sector and to guide civil society and local community representatives as to how the different offences linked to forests and wildlife could get prosecuted.

‘Timber rights and felling permits in Ghana’: This short legal briefing intends to clarify which kind of permits are legal according to Ghanaian law, and which of those permits are recognised under the Voluntary Partnership Agreement between Ghana and the European Union.

‘When are social responsibility agreements a legal requirement in Ghana?’: This briefing is a short analysis of when social responsibility agreements are legally required under different types of logging permits in Ghana.