FORESTRY SECTOR & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: GHANA CASE
Erle Frayne Argonza
Magandang umaga! Good morning!
It is interesting to examine how state players can somehow enable the social responsibility field by enforcing rules on certain market players to recognize the social responsibility criterion in their areas of operations. One such appropriate case is the country of Ghana, where logging firms must follow the same criterion through an instrument called ‘Social Responsibility Agreement.’
A summary of the report about the country case is shown below.
[07 October 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to Eldis database reports.]
Social responsibility agreements in Ghana’s forestry sector
Authors: Ayine,D.M.
Produced by: International Institute for Environment and Development (2008)
In Ghana, legislation requires logging firms to commit a portion of their financial resources towards the provision of social amenities to local forest communities. Logging firms must perform this legal obligation by signing and implementing “Social Responsibility Agreements” (SRAs) with forest communities. This report is about legal arrangements for enabling forest communities in Ghana to participate better in the benefits generated by timber activities.
The document considers whether SRAs serve as effective vehicles for the sharing of benefits between local forest communities and investors. It reviews experience with Social Responsibility Agreements, and looks at what difference they have made to forest communities. In addition the author assesses the design, implementation and outcomes of Social Responsibility Agreements in the forestry industry in Ghana, drawing on a number of SRAs concluded between timber firms and local communities. Conclusions include:
- Ghana’s experience may provide interesting lessons for other countries that are looking into developing arrangements to promote benefit sharing in forestry or in other sectors
- the positive features of SRAs include clearly laid out minimum standards, explicit legal backing, and consideration for the conditions laid out in SRAs in the selection process for competitive TUC bids
- wthe legal framework provides an enabling environment for the negotiation of SRAs, the actual practice of negotiating and implementing these agreements leaves much to be desired
- Social Responsibility Agreements may become a more effective tool if local groups are better equipped to negotiate them. This requires establishing mechanisms to broaden community representation, so as to minimise local elite capture of SRA benefits.
This entry was posted on October 18, 2008 at 11:08 am and is filed under biology, corporate social responsibility, development studies, ecology, economics, globalization, News, peace, politics, sociology. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Africa, capacity building, community forestry, development, ecosystem management, environment, Erle Argonza, forestry, Ghana, governance, institutions, livelihood, nature, private sector, public policy, social forestry, social responsibility, state
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UNLADTAU 
October 18, 2008 at 11:56 am
[…] amorphousintelligence wrote very interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt […]
October 23, 2008 at 7:58 pm
[…] 32) In Ghana, legislation requires logging firms to commit a portion of their financial resources towards the provision of social amenities to local forest communities. Logging firms must perform this legal obligation by signing and implementing “Social Responsibility Agreements” (SRAs) with forest communities. This report is about legal arrangements for enabling forest communities in Ghana to participate better in the benefits generated by timber activities. The document considers whether SRAs serve as effective vehicles for the sharing of benefits between local forest communities and investors. It reviews experience with Social Responsibility Agreements, and looks at what difference they have made to forest communities. In addition the author assesses the design, implementation and outcomes of Social Responsibility Agreements in the forestry industry in Ghana, drawing on a number of SRAs concluded between timber firms and local communities. Conclusions include: 1) Ghana’s experience may provide interesting lessons for other countries that are looking into developing arrangements to promote benefit sharing in forestry or in other sectors 2) the positive features of SRAs include clearly laid out minimum standards, explicit legal backing, and consideration for the conditions laid out in SRAs in the selection process for competitive TUC bids 3) the legal framework provides an enabling environment for the negotiation of SRAs, the actual practice of negotiating and implementing these agreements leaves much to be desired 4) Social Responsibility Agreements may become a more effective tool if local groups are better equipped to negotiate them. This requires establishing mechanisms to broaden community representation, so as to minimise local elite capture of SRA benefits. https://unladtau.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/forestry-sector-social-responsibility-ghana-case/ […]
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January 2, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Reblogged this on educatedajebutter and commented:
Corprate Social iResponsibility has beenf or a long while Cosmetic ” and very ‘ voluntary ‘. But we all know that its not a privillege and that it should be a right of the communities that the foreign companies come to work among….. not in the small way they often pass off ( buying the community mosquito nets) . it should actually be detailed and assessible by the community and the government giving the foreign companies licenses to drill or mine locally. lets examine the Ghana Forestry act that developed the ‘Social Responsibility Agreement Tool’.
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