Property, Access and eXclusion (AX)

Project summary

AX examines how each set of actors along Ghana’s charcoal chain gain or maintain access to benefits. Access, defined as the ability to benefit from things, is controlled and maintained via a broad repertoire of social and structural means including rights (property), authority, coercion, stealth, or identity-based privilege. Understanding these processes and means is a prerequisite for any prescription aiming at equitable natural resource benefit sharing. AX investigates access, and its converse, exclusion how they are established, maintained and lost. It also analyzes the environmental sustainability of charcoal production as it is shaped by access relations. In Ghana, woodfuels provide for 64% of the primary energy consumption and some 450,000 people produce, transport and market charcoal as their primary occupation. AX strengthens research capacity through three embedded PhD studies, closely coordinated with senior staff from Ghana and DK. To link research, policy and practice, AX establishes two district-level charcoal platforms and a national stakeholder forum to share and discuss research findings and further their application. AX identifies how means of access and exclusion shape current distribution of benefits in this sector. It provides the basis for the design of equitable natural resource policy and practice. This project will hone access analysis as a means for guiding the design of natural resource benefit sharing arrangements.