Integrating Landscape, Seascape, and Natural Capital Approaches for People, Planet, and Prosperity

The world is facing three environmental crises—nature loss, climate change, and pollution—which disproportionately impact low-income countries. Placing nature at the core of development efforts across sectors can avert risks and support economic prosperity.  

The World Bank’s Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy (ENB) Global Practice leverages partnerships to promote a ridge-to-reef approach to development, which integrates sustainable natural resource management approaches across the landscape, seascape, nature, and biodiversity agendas.  Investments in nature are made across terrestrial, coastal, and marine ecosystems, from land to sea.  With this approach, ENB Trust Funds collaborate with knowledge, lessons, analytics, convening, and investments, to support governments to deploy improved policies and practices at the national level.

For example, in Ghana, environmental degradation imposes large direct and indirect costs on people, nature, and the economy, each year, equivalent to 10% of GDP.  However, the Government of Ghana, with support from the World Bank's Multi-donor Trust Funds (MDTFs), has committed to investing in an integrated approach to sustainable landscape and seascape management.

Among other things, PROBLUE supports work to restore mangroves in coastal Ghana, which provide a range of benefits to the environment. Acting as buffers between land and water, mangroves have the potential to protect the coastline from erosion, sea-level rise, and nature disasters. PROGREEN works to promote sustainable landscape management practices. In doing so, it supports community participation in decision-making to empower communities to be the true custodians of their landscapes.  These two Multi-Donor Trust Funds, PROBLUE and PROGREEN, work to develop knowledge, build capacity through technical assistance, and co-finance larger World Bank investment.

A third MDTF, the Global Program on Sustainability (GPS), works in concert to strengthen the country’s capacity for measuring and valuing natural capital and ecosystem services, for better policy, development, and investment planning. The Bank is scaling up the impact of these partnerships through co-financing and leveraging other funds, including those from the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

The Global Partnership for Sustainable and Resilient Landscapes (PROGREEN) supports rural livelihood development and landscape restoration while tackling declining biodiversity, forest loss, and deteriorating land fertility. 

A World Bank administered multi-donor trust fund, PROGREEN provides tools and knowledge to support countries’ efforts to reduce poverty while tackling deforestation and landscape degradation, and increasing risks exacerbated by a changing climate, such as uncontrolled forest fires and drought. 

Healthy forests and land-based ecosystems are essential to life on Earth. Ecosystem services—such as water cycle regulation, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity habitat—sustain livelihoods by providing food, fuel, shelter, and jobs. Forests and landscapes, however, are under significant and increasing threat. Unsustainable resource management is leading to deforestation and land degradation driven by land conversion for agriculture, infrastructure, mining, and other such activities. This loss is impacting economies and environments around the world, most notably in rural areas, where 78 percent of the world’s poor live.

Through an integrated landscape approach, PROGREEN is helping regions and countries reverse these trends and meet their national and global sustainable development goals and commitments in a cost-effective manner.

In Ghana, PROGREEN is supporting the Ghana Landscape Restoration and Small-scale Mining Project (GLRSSMP) in implementing cross-sectoral land-use planning and management in the country’s Northern Savannah Zone (NSZ). The objective of the project is to strengthen natural resource management and increase benefits to communities in targeted savannah and cocoa forest landscapes. The project has three main components: 

• Institutional Strengthening for Participatory Landscape Management 

• Enhanced Governance in Support of Sustainable Artisanal and Small-scale Mining  

• Sustainable Crop and Forest Landscape Management 

Support includes on-ground investments to scale up and expand community-based land-use planning and management, and analytical work and technical assistance to catalyze consensus and influence policy and regulations in support of greening investments.

The project activities bring together cross-sectoral perspectives to landscape management and improve coordination for landscape management by focusing on mining licensing, improving standards for cashew production, processing and marketing, and the governance of Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs).

PROGREEN is also supporting analytical work on sustainable wildfire management in the NSZ. A recent report on Wildfire Monitoring and Management recommends the adoption of an accountable and participatory approach to wildfire management wherein government and communities can collaborate.

Other PROGREEN-supported analytical work centers of the woodfuels section, which contribute greatly to Ghana’s national energy supply and are of particular importance to rural livelihoods.  Firewood or charcoal are still the main cooking fuel for 4.5 million households and woodfuels are also widely used for institutional and commercial catering, industrial processing, and small enterprises. A recent analysis of the Woodfuels Sector in Ghana makes recommendations for demand reduction, supply enhancement, and the strengthening of governance structures.

RELATED:

• Ghana Landscape Restoration and Small-Scale Mining Project

• Ghana - Green Growth PASA : Analysis of the Woodfuels Sector

• Wildfire Monitoring and Management Options in the Northern Savannah Zone of Ghana

PROBLUE is a multi-donor trust fund, administered by the World Bank, that supports the sustainable and integrated development of marine and coastal resources in healthy oceans. PROBLUE is fully aligned with the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and increasing the income and welfare of the poor in a sustainable way.

PROBLUE supports the World Bank’s overall oceans portfolio. PROBLUE focuses on four key areas:

• The management of sustainable fisheries and aquaculture

• Addressing threats posed to ocean health by marine pollution, including litter and plastics, from marine or land-based sources 

• The sustainable development of key oceanic sectors such as tourism, maritime transport and off-shore renewable energy

• Building government capacity to manage marine resources, including nature-based infrastructure such as mangroves, in an integrated way to deliver more and long-lasting benefits to countries and communities

In Ghana, the World Bank, via PROBLUE, is supporting the West Africa Coastal Areas Management Program (WACA), supporting efforts to reduce coastal erosion, flooding, and pollution. With PROBLUE financing, a series of technical reports have just been published, examining the benefits of mangrove restoration and also the impact of mangroves on women in Ghana. These studies are intended to support the Government of Ghana to strategically plan the sustainable use of mangroves in coastal communities.

Further, Ghana will manage 3,000 ha of mangroves to revive fish habitats and protect its coast through the $13.5 million Mangrove Blue Carbon Pilot Program. The program, supported by IDA, the PROBLUE trust fund, and the Danish energy company Ørsted, will provide financing for planting and maintaining mangroves over a period of 20 years, and for increasing community leadership and women’s engagement in the management of these mangrove forests. 

PROBLUE is also helping in the development of Ghana’s Sustainable Ocean Plan (SOP), which will guide how the Government of Ghana sustainably manages 100 percent of the ocean area under national jurisdiction to develop its blue economy. PROBLUE financing is directly supporting the Government’s consultative process to develop the SOP, national experts to guide the process, data collection and technical analyses.  Along with IDA, PROBLUE will also provide the resources to make the SOP a reality by implementing area specific marine spatial plans (MSP).

Finally, PROBLUE and IDA, via WACA will also support improved plastic pollution management through the design of regulatory and legal frameworks, advancing recommendations from Ghana’s National Plastic Action Partnership through innovative pilots for plastic collection and buy-back and recycling centers.

RELATED:

• REPORT: Benefits of Mangrove Afforestation and Restoration Programs in Ghana

• REPORT: Understanding the Nexus of Mangroves and Women in Ghana

• VIDEO: Blue Economy Resurgence: Revitalizing Ghana's Mangroves and Coastal Livelihoods (Long version of the video is available here) 

• FEATURE STORY: Fisheries Under Pressure - from Ghana to the Caribbean

• PRESS RELEASE: World Bank Announces New Blue Economy Financing Program for African Countries

• WEBSITE: West Africa Coastal Areas Management Program (WACA)

• eBook: WACA Plastics eBook (released on June 6, 2023)

The Global Program on Sustainability (GPS) is a World Bank-led Umbrella Program that aims to integrate sustainability considerations into policies and decision making through the provision of data, metrics and tools. 

GPS engages with 25 countries by supporting efforts to integrate natural capital and ecosystem services into investment and policy decisions. GPS also helps inform the design and implementation of World Bank projects in core implementing countries, including Ghana, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria and Türkiye.

In Ghana, GPS is supporting work on the wealth accounts and advanced macroeconomic indicators, land and ecosystem extent accounts, and ecosystem services accounts. The ecosystem services accounts will include services like water flow regulation, carbon sequestration/storage, sediment retention and selected provisioning services from forests. Accounts will be developed using the SEEA framework, which is linked to the System of National Accounts.

Key policy questions informed by this data include: 

• What is the real contribution of natural assets and the ecosystem services they provide to the national economy?

• How does Ghana build capacity for measuring, valuing and integrating natural capital and ecosystem services-related information to better inform decisions?

• What are the underlying implications of exploiting natural capital under Business-As-Usual conditions?

• What is the income and wealth of Ghana when adjusted for environmental impacts and assets? 

The program will also develop studies to complement data used for the accounts and respond to specific needs and gaps. This is made up of the development of wealth accounting and adjusted net savings indicators, input to the design of a payment for ecosystem services (PES) scheme and support to update of the National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAP). Ecosystem accounts will provide information to prioritize ecosystem restoration areas as well as assess payment levels in the PES scheme envisaged in the Ghana Landscape Restoration and Small-Scale Mining Project. This will be achieved through measuring and valuing forest ecosystem services and noting changes in their values given different land uses of designated areas. 

RELATED:

• FACTSHEET: Natural Capital Accounting in Ghana (June 2023)
• BRIEF: Natural Capital Accounting in Ghana: Country Brief (June 2023) 
• WEBINAR: Strengthening Ghana’s Capacity to Measure and Value Natural Capital

• BROCHURE: Global Partnership on Sustainability (GPS)
• FEATURE STORY: Strengthening the Capacity for Measuring and Valuing Natural Capital in Ghana

• FEATURE STORY: Ghana Begins Receiving Payments for Reducing Carbon Emissions in Forest Landscapes