How to co-develop transformative future visions for Ghana’s ocean and coast in response to the threats of climate change, plastics pollution and overfishing? This blog post unpacks the findings from a report on a pilot process that collaboratively developed a transformative future vision for Ghana’s ocean and coast (Ghana is one of One Ocean Hub’s partner countries) with Hub researchers, coastal communities, civil society and government from Ghana.

Over a four month period (August-November 2023) Hub researchers Nina Rivers, Bernadette Snow, Mia Strand and Meredith Fernades worked with Hub researchers and students at the University of Cape Coast (UCC, Ghana) as well as representatives of civil society, fisher communities and government to co-develop transformative future visions for Ghana’s ocean and coast in response to three main threats: climate change, plastics pollution and resources overuse, particularly with regards to overfishing. This blog describes the pilot process, the outcomes and future research emanating from this work that was carried out both virtually and in-person in Ghana.

Why we need sustainable and equitable visions for our ocean future

Over the years there has been a global call to identify visions or future scenarios and pathways that can help humanity navigate away from undesirable futures and towards more sustainable and equitable ones (Bennett et al., 2016; Peterson et al., 2018). New types of globally relevant scenarios and futures are therefore urgently needed but there has been limited work showing how to facilitate this type of work in practice. We therefore decided to pilot a process of how to work with complex challenges such as climate change, plastics pollution and overfishing and how to create future visions that respond to these.

The triple threats to Ghana: climate change, plastics pollution and overfishing

Over the past few years Hub researchers from a range of disciplines in Ghana have been carrying out inter- and transdisciplinary research, seeking to address pressing issues and challenges that undermine fair and inclusive ocean governance.

To help vision setting in this pilot process, three cross-cutting themes or threats in Ghana were identified: climate change, plastics pollution and resource overuse, specifically with regards to overfishing but also in terms of overharvesting of marine resources such as mangrove forests and sand mining. More threats exist but these three overlap and speak to all of the Ocean Decade Challenges. The aim of this pilot process was to co-develop transformative future visions along with practical ways to reach these (pathways to impact) that respond to climate change, plastics pollution and resource overuse in Ghana.

Piloting the Three Horizons Approach

In order to co-develop these visions, we used the Three Horizons Approach (Sharpe et al. 2016) which is a simple framework that enabled us to work with complex problems (e.g. climate change), across disciplines (e.g. we brought ecologists, economists, and lawyers together with various stakeholder groups e.g. fishers, government officials and NGO workers). The framework takes you through a process of identifying current challenges (Horizon 1), identifying visions of the future in response to these challenges (Horizon 3) and pathways to reach these visions (Horizon 2).

Steps and outcomes of the pilot

Step 1: Identifying current ocean challenges in Ghana

The first step was to identify the current ocean governance challenges in Ghana that need to be responded to (Horizon 1). The primary challenges identified by Ghanaian participants included negative environmental impacts, poor governance systems, limited capacity, bigger picture or drivers of complex challenges, communication and education challenges, lack of compliance, livelihood and food security challenges as well as socio-cultural challenges.

Step 2: Identifying visions for Ghana’s future

The second step included developing a vision for the future in response to these challenges (Horizon 3). The future visions identified by participants responded to each individual challenge and included that Ghana has:

•functioning marine and coastal ecosystems with no pollution (environmental vision);
sustainable and equitable integrated coastal co-management (governance and
management vision);

•political will and capacity for transformative ocean governance (capacity vision);
increased inter- and trans-disciplinary research;

•appropriate nature-based solutions and regional and international collaboration (bigger
picture vision);

•increased dialogue and stewardship between government and civil society
(communication vision);

•increased marine/ocean/coastal literacy in schools and for the general public (education
vision);

•improved compliance and implementation of regulations and bottom-up approaches
(compliance vision);

•just, inclusive, co-developed supplementary livelihoods and improved food security
(livelihoods vision); and

•ways to protects tangible and intangible cultural heritage (cultural vision).

From these multiple visions an overarching vision for Ghana’s ocean, coast and coastal communities was developed: “Ghana is resilient to climate change, protecting biodiversity and culture and has well managed fisheries”.

Step 3: Identifying pathways to the future

The third step was to co-identify pathways or practical ways to realise these visions for the future. These pathways can be thought of as ‘seeds’ for the future and can be any innovative social, technological, economic, or social–ecological initiative or way of thinking or doing that have the potential to reverse or help adapt to the negative trends caused by climate change, plastic pollution or resource overuse in Ghana. Examples of what participants identified were ‘Trash for Cash’ initiatives (plastics pollution), ‘Catch them Young, Not Fish’ (education, capacity and skills development for youth to reduce overfishing) and communicating carbon credit benefits for increasing mangrove cover with landowners (climate change).

Overall outcomes of the pilot included:

•A co-developed simple yet powerful overall vision statement for Ghana

•Future pathways designed with time and scale in mind (local to national; now, near future

and far future)

•In-country stakeholders co-developed visions and pathways/’seeds’

•A Three Horizons map depicting the current state of Ghana, future aspirations for Ghana and several pathways to obtain this future (combined from three ‘smaller’ maps from climate change, resource overuse and plastics pollution).

•The pilot process also supported several of the Hub Code of Practice principles

Going forward with this research, the identified ‘seeds’ or innovations already taking place or in their embryonic form will be used to inform future funding opportunities in Ghana. This work was also presented at the UN Ocean Decade Conference’s  poster in Barcelona, Spain (April 2024). We are also currently developing a policy brief from this work led by Emmanual Acheampong from UCC, Ghana. Watch this space in December 2024!