Introduction

In this era of climate change, environmental degradation and socio-economic challenges, forest landscape restoration is advocated to be a normative ecological practice. Forest restoration is “a planned process that aims to regain ecological integrity and enhance human wellbeing in deforested or degraded landscapes” (WWF and IUCN 2000 cited in Mansourian 2021). It is estimated that more than 2 billion hectares (ha) of the earth’s surface is viable for forest restoration. This estimate informed the Bonn Challenge, which is encouraging private entities, organisations and national governments to restore 350 million ha by 2030 (Chazdon et al. 2020; Laestadius et al. 2015). With its potentials for sustaining ecological balance and providing renewable resources to support a bioeconomy, many countries have adopted forest restorations, yielding varied outcomes (Owusu et al. 2023; Rai et al. 2018).

Ghana, a country in West Africa, faced with rapid forest degradation of about 2%, equivalent to 1350 km2 per annum (Kyere-Boateng and Marek 2021), has embarked on many tree-planting initiatives, the flagship being the Modified Taungya System (MTS). The MTS is a reforestation scheme established in Ghana in 2002 but which has a long history. Deforestation due to unsustainable timber harvesting necessitated a nationwide reforestation drive using the Taungya System (TS) in the 1930s (Acheampong et al. 2016; Agyeman et al. 2003). The TS was an agroforestry first introduced in Burma, now Myanmar, where degraded forest reserves were given to local farmers to plant tree and food crops until canopy is formed. When the TS was first introduced in Ghana, it contributed only marginally to forest recovery and was largely unsuccessful because of insecure access to, unfair distribution of land, exclusion of farmers from decision-making process and inadequate supervision by the Forest Commission (FC) (Adjei et al. 2020; Agyeman et al. 2003). The effect was that most farmers were more interested in food crop production than tree planting and even where trees were planted, they were later killed deliberately or farmers failed to nurture them so that crop farming would continue unabated because they did not have any benefit in the tree (Agyeman et al. 2003; Ros-Tonen et al. 2014). Consequently, the TS was suspended in 1984 (Ros-Tonen et al. 2013).

Meanwhile, the financial crisis in Ghana in the 1980s meant that FC probably lacked the financial resources to acquire logistics and hire more human resources to embark on reforestation. Even the structural adjustment programme advised by the Bretton Woods institutions at the time would not have encouraged the government to finance reforestation. So, for almost two decades, there was no coordinated reforestation activities in Ghana except the enactment of the 1994 Forest and Wildlife policy which seeks, among other aims, to encourage co-management of these resources. Furthermore, shortage of farmland in forest-adjacent communities due to concentration on the production of cash crops such as cocoa, rubber and oil palm (Narh et al. 2023; Wiersma 2020) caused farmers, especially land-poor and migrants, to encroach on forest reserves to cultivate food crops. The result was increased deforestation. To find solutions to address these challenges, the government of Ghana, with support from the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Bank, conducted stakeholder consultations from July 2001 to December 2002 (18 months) with farmers, landowners (mostly traditional authorities), forest-adjacent communities and non-governmental organizations (Agyeman et al. 2003). The outcome of the deliberations was the MTS.

The MTS differs markedly from the TS in several ways. Under the MTS, farmers who are interested are supposed to form a Modified Taungya Group (MoTaG) whose leaders are to be elected (Adjei et al. 2020). Also, the MoTaG has to draft by-laws or constitution and mechanisms to ensure fair distribution of land and for addressing grievances respectively (Adjei et al. 2020; Agyeman et al. 2003). The FC is supposed to play oversight and supervisory roles. The MoTaG applies to the FC for degraded forest reserve to practice agroforestry under the MTS (Acheampong et al. 2016; Adjei et al. 2020). The MTS is self-financingFootnote 1 except that the FC has to provide tree sapling to farmers to plant. Farmers cultivate permissible food crops until about three years when the tree form canopy but they are supposed to continue to protect the trees from harmful activities such as illegal logging and bushfire (Agyeman et al. 2003). And most importantly, unlike the TS where farmers do not have a share in the trees that they cultivate, farmers are entitled to 40% of the standing tree value under the MTS. The government, landowners and forest-adjacent community also have 40%, 15% and 5% share in the value of the trees respectively. The FC and MoTaG are required to prepare land-lease and benefit sharing contract accordingly. The national forest plantation development Act (2002) and the Timber Resources Management Amendment Act (2002) give legal backing to the MTS and the benefit sharing arrangement (Kalame et al. 2011).

With the MTS in place, Ghana has quickly pledged to establish 2 million ha of forest for the Bonn Challenge. The country has also developed a 25-years forest plantation strategies with an ambitious aim to establish 625,000 hectares of new forest plantations and enrich 100,000 hectares of degrading forests, banking on the MTS as one of strategies (FC 2017). It is therefore important to understand the progress and potentials of the MTS for forest landscape restoration. As such, this review is underpinned by the follow specific research questions: What is the geographical focus of the MTS in Ghana? What are the motivations of farmers for engaging in the MTS? How adaptive is the governance of the MTS? What are the gender dynamics of the MTS? What are the ecological achievements and challenges of the MTS? These questions are crucial to examine the outcome and sustainability of the MTS (Kalame et al. 2011). For instance, farmers are key stakeholders and without them, there is no MTS. As such, their motivations for getting involved have direct consequences for the sustainability or otherwise of the MTS. Also, adaptive governance helps the address abrupt and gradual environmental or landscape changes and it encourages knowledge and learning (Karpouzoglou et al. 2016) and it is important to understand if stakeholders have learned from the failures of the TS. Additionally, the location and the state of ecological recovery under the MTS are important to evaluate the agroforestry initiative. Besides, an analysis of a synthesised empirical studies is crucial to determine the prospects of the MTS in meeting pledges like the Bonn Challenge and achieving the much-needed nature-based solution to mitigating climate change and sustaining a bioeconomy.

Critical adaptive governance

I draw insight from the theory of adaptive governance to situate the analysis of this review. Adaptive governance is suitable as a lens for this review given the historical trajectory of the Modified Taungya System (MTS) in Ghana. As indicated, the MTS emerged from an 18-month intensive research and consultation with stakeholders to avoid the challenges that bedevilled the erstwhile Taungya System (Agyeman et al. 2003). I therefore assume that the MTS will be adaptive to the socio-economic, political and ecological dynamics that influence forest management in Ghana. Adaptive governance is “a range of interactions between actors, networks, organisations, and institutions emerging in pursuit of a desired state for social-ecological systems” (Chaffin et al. 2014). Adaptive governance encourages decentralization of rights, power and responsibilities to foster partnership (Folke et al. 2005; Hahn 2011). Adaptive governance is crucial not only for addressing environmental change, but also as it covers economic, socio-cultural and political issues which contribute to ecological changes across scales (Munene et al. 2018). Additionally, adaptive governance provides the lens for analysing adaptive capacity, level of collaboration among actors, knowledge, learning and scaling (Brunner 2005; Karpouzoglou et al. 2016; Termeer et al. 2015). In short, adaptive governance enables socio-ecological systems to anticipate and adapt to the ever-constant phenomenon of change (Dietz et al. 2003; Folke et al. 2005).

Dietz et al. (2003) suggested 5 requirements for adaptive governance to be effective. First, they argue that in adaptive governance, adequate information should be provided about the resource that is being governed and the ecological system and how they are affected by human-environmental interactions (Dietz et al. 2003). Second, they argue that power dynamics, interests and values among actors make conflict inevitable in natural resource governance and management so there should be a mechanism for resolving conflict for effective adaptive governance (Dietz et al. 2003). Third, the system should encourage compliance to the governing rules (Dietz et al. 2003). It is only when the rules are followed that conflicts could be minimised and all actors will feel treated fairly. Fourth, the needed infrastructure should be provided to support the system and finally, change is expected and so, institutions should be designed to accommodate any shift in scale and unexpected outcomes in the socio-ecological systems (Dietz et al. 2003). These requirement are likely to “facilitate experimentation, learning, and change” (Dietz et al. 2003).

Again, Dietz et al. (2003) proposed analytic deliberation, nesting and institutional variety as strategies for achieving the requirements for adaptive governance. Analytic deliberation is open discussion and sharing of information which could foster trust among actors or stakeholders (politicians, resource users, scientists) (Brunner 2005; Dietz et al. 2003; Folke et al. 2005). Regarding nesting, “Institutional arrangements must be complex, redundant, and nested in many layers” to avoid the failures associated with centralised natural resources governance (Dietz et al. 2003). Institutional variety implies the use of several institutions across scale. It is therefore aptly argued that “adaptive governance of ecosystems generally involves polycentric institutional arrangements, which are nested quasi-autonomous decision-making units operating at multiple scales” (Folke et al. 2005).

Despite the usefulness of adaptive governance, it is not without weaknesses. Some have argued that adaptive governance does not provide reasons why governance often fails (Biesbroek et al. 2014; Boyd et al. 2014) and also is inadequate to address power asymmetry among actors (Clark and Clarke 2011; Ernstson et al. 2010; Wilson 2018). With these seeming weaknesses of adaptive governance, some scholars have proposed theoretical multiplicity (Karpouzoglou et al. 2016) where additional theories are used to enhance analyses of human-environment interactions (McDougall et al. 2013; Rijke et al. 2012, 2013) while others have argued that other theories are much better (Cleaver and Whaley 2018). While it is a normal academic exercise to use complementary theories to enhance analyses and or meet research objectives, it is often portrayed that the theory of adaptive governance has reached its limit and that it can no longer be made critical to address emerging issue. However, like other theories and concepts, adaptive governance can evolve by injecting criticality into its tenets and analyses. While such critical look at adaptive governance is beyond the scope of this article, I dare to say that power analysis regarding whose knowledge is learnt, how the rules are set and the relationships among actors and their implications for the system can be analysed with adaptive governance without necessarily engaging other complimentary theories.

Methods

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) by Page et al. (2021) was employed to identify, screen and select eligible empirical works on the MTS for this review. The PRISMA strategy reduces bias in selection and inclusion of articles. The inclusion criterion for this review is empirical studies on the MTS in Ghana. Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) which are the most comprehensive and reliable databases for scientific work (Pranckutė 2021) and Google Scholar were used to search for relevant documents.

Search was performed on Scopus and Web of Science in the title, abstract and keywords with the equation “modified AND taungya AND system” and was limited to only title in Google Scholar (GS)Footnote 2 (see Fig. 1) from 28th August to 4th September 2023. Scopus, WoS and GS produced 15, 17 and 27 documents respectively. The next stage was reading the abstract of all the documents in Scopus to select the one that meet the criterion. After perusing the abstracts, 7 articles that met the criterion were included while the remaining 8 documents were excluded. The same procedure was followed for the WoS and of the 17 documents, 7 were duplicates of Scopus results of which 6 have already been selected, 2 new documents have been included and the remaining 9 did not meet the inclusion criterion. Furthermore, of the result from Google scholar, 6 were duplicates, 3 were theses from which articlesFootnote 3 were written and already selected, 13 were either citations or documents that do not meet the criterion and 4 new documents were included. Thus, 13 documents are used for this review. Additionally, some articles and reports on the MTS which do not meet the selection criteria have been used to buttress claims in the analysis (Table 1).

Fig. 1
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PRISMA flow diagramme

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Table 1 The included documents used in this review
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Findings

Location of the studies

The studies were conducted in 13 forest reserves of 7 forest districts in 5 regions of Ghana (Table 2). Tano-Offinso (Nkawie district) in Ashanti region is the reserve mostly used for studies followed by Pamu-Berekum (Dormaa district), Tain II and Yaya (both in the Sunyani district) all in the Bono region. As shown in Fig. 2, studies on the MTS of the selected articles for this review are concentrated at south-western part of the country’s high forest zones.

Table 2 Forest reserves, districts and regions studied by the selected documents
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Fig. 2
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A map of forest reserves in Ghana showing the study reserves

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Ghana is demarcated into 16 administrative regions with 56 forest districts responsible for managing the country’s 286 forest and game reserves. There may be studies that were not indexed on the search engines used in this review but the northern part of Ghana seems not to be involved in active reforestation drive under the MTSFootnote 4.

Motivation of, and potential benefits to, farmers participating in the MTS

Many studies sought to understand farmers’ motivation for engaging in the MTS. Wiersma (2020) has reported that farmers in the Juaboso district in the Western North region have used their land to cultivate cocoa and they no longer have land to cultivate food crops. It also emerged that many farmers got involved as the MTS provides an alternative source of income, guarantee access to degraded forest reserve to cultivate food crops and non-tree forest products (NTFP) such as fruits, mushrooms and bushmeat (Akamani and Hall 2019; Appiah et al. 2020; Asare-Kissiedu et al. 2018; Blay et al. 2008; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013). The MTS is supposed to be self-financing but the government of Ghana had a support from the African Development Bank from 2002 to 2010 to train local farmers in, and pay them for establishing nurseries, pegs cutting and tree planting techniques which provided jobs and income for people (Abugre et al. 2010; Acheampong et al. 2016; Nketia et al. 2022; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013). This initiative was called Community Forest Management Programme (CFMP) which also adopted the strategy of the MTS. The MTS has also encouraged and enhanced social capital through formation of MoTaGs,

Also, the MTS is a source of legal timber and farmers stand to gain monetary benefit in the long run for the trees they are planting (Akamani and Hall 2019; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013). Using cost-benefit ratio analysis, Kalame et al. (2011) estimated that the benefit of food and income from surplus and the revenue from trees of the MTS is higher than the cost of planting and maintaining the trees. Specifically, they estimated that the net present value at a 15% discount rate was US$20,362 with 17.77% internal rate of return per hectare after the first thinning (Kalame et al. 2011). Another potential benefit to farmers is that the tree will provide habitat for beekeeping. Okyere-Amoateng and Abugre (2022) found that honey, beehive and propolis are high in teak but there is no significant difference among the trees. However, while there is no colonisation in in cedrela (Cedrela odorata)-made beehive and therefore, no honey production, there was 88% and 77% of colonisation in beehives made of teak (Tectona grandis) and ofram (Terminalia superba) respectively (Okyere-Amoateng and Abugre 2022). The implication of this is that the exotic tree species like teak and cedrela that are being planted under the MTS can encourage some biodiversity and provide alternative source of livelihood to local people.

Governance

The MTS is found to conform with the Adaptation Policy Framework except that there is no clear policy objectives and strategy on climate change (Kalame et al. 2011). Others have looked at the MTS through the lens of adaptive landscape governance and found that farmers has limited or no room to make or modify the policy as the governance is largely hierarchical and fixed (Adjei et al. 2020; Ros-Tonen et al. 2014). Further, instead of electing the leaders of the Modified Taungya group (MoTaG), they are sometimes appointed by local chiefs, subverting democratic representation (Adjei et al. 2020). In short, the principles and enabling conditions for adaptive landscape governance are not adequately employed (Ros-Tonen et al. 2014). Also, trees are imposed on farmers and some major food crops like cassava are not allowed to be cultivated on the MTS plots until the roots of the newly planted trees are developed sufficiently. Yet some farmers disobey that directive and plant the crop during the formative period of the trees (Acheampong et al. 2016; Asare-Kissiedu et al. 2018; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013; Wiersma 2020). Largely, the MTS is not a platform for soft law enforcement (Kumeh et al. 2021; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013).

Gender rolesFootnote 5

Both men and women have equal access to land and other inputs to engage in the MTS and the women have full access to the income they earn from the activities and are economically empowered (Abugre et al. 2010; Appiah et al. 2020). Further, fertilizer application, harvesting and marketing of seedling, storage and preservation are conducted equally by men and women (Abugre et al. 2010). However, jobs that require brute force like clearing weeding, fencing the nursery are carried out by men. Also, while men generally play supervisory role and women spend less time than men working on the MTS-related activities, women spend most of their time on household activities (Abugre et al. 2010).

Ecological achievement of the MTS

There has been a moderate forest restoration under the MTS as presented in Table 3.

Table 3 Area of restoration in some forest reserves.
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In the Pamu-Berekum, Afrensu-Brohuma, Southern Scarp forest reserves, 250 ha have been reforested under the MTS (Appiah et al. 2020; Blay et al. 2008). In the Afram Headwaters and Opro forest reserves, a total of 326 ha of degraded forestland were released for the MTS from 2002 to 2007 (Adjei et al. 2020) but whether the entire area is planted or not and the surviving rate of the trees were not the focus of that study. In the Tano-Offin, Tain II and Yaya forest reserves 79.2, 40.8 and 112 ha have been reforested respectively (Ros-Tonen et al. 2013). At the district level, 1280 ha (3%) of the Tano-Offin reserve has been restored from 2002 to 2007 while 1845 ha (4%) of the Tain II forest reserve reforested from 2002 to 2009 and 3181 ha (62%) of the Yaya forest reserve reforested under the CFMP from 2005 to 2009 (Ros-Tonen et al. 2013).

Local people were not happy about the state of the forest before the establishment of agroforestry but the MTS have contributed to enriching forest reserves to enhance biodiversity, water regulation and purification, and nutrient cycling and to minimise land degradation (Akamani and Hall 2019; Asare-Kissiedu et al. 2018; Bampoh and Damnyag 2020; Kalame et al. 2011; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013). Also, the alternative source of income from the MTS has contributed to a reduction in illegal logging (Akamani and Hall 2019). Local people are aware of the environmental service but they often rank carbon sequestration as the least of ecological benefit of the MTS (Bampoh and Damnyag 2020).

Further, reforestation under the MTS is mostly done with exotic tree species. Most of the studies reported that teak (Tectona grandis) and cedrela (Cedrela odorata) are the dominant tree species planted (Acheampong et al. 2016; Asare-Kissiedu et al. 2018; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013; Wiersma 2020). Only a few studies reported that indigenous trees were planted (Appiah et al. 2020; Blay et al. 2008). In some cases, only 5% of the trees planted are native to Ghana (Ros-Tonen et al. 2013). The common indigenous tree species planted are ofram (Terminalia superba), emire (Terminalia ivorensis), and mahogany (Khaya ivorensis) (Appiah et al. 2020; Blay et al. 2008; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013). Asare-Kissiedu et al. (2018) reported that between 600 and 800 trees were planted in the Wurobong forest reserve each year from 2002. According to Appiah et al. (2020), the survival rate of tree per hectare of a 15 years old plantation under the MTS in the Pamu-Berekum forest reserve is 71% with an average diameter and height of 23 cm and 22 m respectively. It is important to note that natural forest is more diverse than the MTS established forest (Asare-Kissiedu et al. 2018).

Challenges confronting the MTS

Several challenges are impeding successful practice and potential of the MTS. First, there is inadequate support and supervision from the FC to farmers to plant the trees effectively (Acheampong et al. 2016). In some cases, the FC rather pays labourers to plant trees after farmers have prepared the land and plant their crops (Wiersma 2020). Second, in some communities, land allocation is bedeviled with nepotism and corruption (Wiersma 2020). While some people are excluded, or need to pay bribe or assigned small size, others, especially the MoTaG leaders, demarcate larger plots of land to themselves (Adjei et al. 2020; Asare-Kissiedu et al. 2018; Wiersma 2020). Yet, there are no MoTaG constitutions to address grievances (Adjei et al. 2020). Consequently, some poor farmers are not able to get engaged in the MTS (Adjei et al. 2020; Wiersma 2020). Also, the MoTaGs lack pruning and fire-fighting equipment to maintain and protect the tree and even the FC is under-resourced to provide any logistical assistance to farmers (Adjei et al. 2020). Besides, after the tree form canopy, there are potential loss of income from food crops for farmer until the plantation are thinned (Ros-Tonen et al. 2013) but farmers can engage in bee keeping in the meantime to generate income (Okyere-Amoateng and Abugre 2022). Other challenges include delays in signing agreement for sharing tree revenue and in community or group plantations, there is no clear regulation for sharing benefit among individual farmers and there is lack of mechanism to resolve conflicts (Adjei et al. 2020; Ros-Tonen et al. 2013). Above all, there is lack of adequate information on the MTS. Many farmers think the MTS is the same as the old Taungya System (Wiersma 2020). Additionally, although the FC usually indicate that it informs farmers about their financial benefit, most farmers do not know their share in the trees that they have planted (Adjei et al. 2020; Asare-Kissiedu et al. 2018; Wiersma 2020).

Discussion

The National Forest Plantation Development Programme (NFPDP) drafted in 2001 is one of the institutional frameworks underpinning the establishment of the MTS. The aim of the NFPDP was to establish 243,950 ha of forest by 2016 (Nketia et al. 2022). Between 2002 and 2009 more than 90,000 ha were planted under both the usual MTS and the funded CFMP (Acheampong et al. 2016; FC 2023). By the targeted year, 199,890.5 ha (81.9%) of forest were established through the MTS and other strategies (Acheampong et al. 2016; Nketia et al. 2022). However, the number of hectares of degraded forest reserve released for the MTS is not as important as the number of trees planted and which have survived. Using the number of hectares to measure the success of reforestation is problematic as it can be misleading if the density of surviving trees is low. The density of trees in the area restored through the MTS is largely unknown. Rarely have researchers mentioned the age of the MTS plantations established by their study communities. An exception is Appiah et al. (2020) who reported albeit with inconsistencyFootnote 6 that an MTS-established 15 years old plantation has 71% survival rate of trees. In some of their communities of study, farmers and stakeholders were adequately educated about the MTS which increased their willingness to participate (Blay et al. 2008) and perhaps, protect the trees. Dietz et al. (2003) observed that provision of adequate information through analytic deliberation is required for effective adaptive governance. With general lack of information on the MTS, the surviving rates at other sites is likely to be lower than 70%.

Reforestation under the MTS seems to be concentrated at the south-western part of Ghana. Meanwhile, northern Ghana falls within the Savanna ecological zone and efforts to reforest or at least maintain biodiversity in the forest reserves there will be very beneficial. The combined area restored in the Savannah, Northern, North East, Upper East and Upper West region under other programmes in 2020 was a mere 1373 ha which is just 134.6 ha more than area restored in Ahafo region and only 19.3% of that of the Ashanti region (FC 2021). Recently, Kansanga et al. (2021) have reported the alarming rate at which rosewood has been overexploited in the Upper West region, which indicates that the region is equally faced with deforestation. The potential challenge however, is that the main motivation for farmers engaging in the MTS is to have access to farmland which is not be an incentive for farmers in Northern Ghana. Farmland is becoming scarce in forest-adjacent communities in southern Ghana where adequate rainfall favours the cultivation of cash crops like cocoa, coffee, oil palm and rubber. Moreover, unlike food crops, government provides incentives for cocoa production in the form of subsidized fertilizers and free insecticides for spraying with a guarantee producer price because it earns foreign exchange to the state. But how many, and can, cocoa farmers eat chocolate or consume beverages and bread make of cocoa on daily basis? So, the politics of cocoa cultivation has contributed to land scarcity with implication for food security for many farmers, which has complicated mediating access to degraded forest reserves to practice agroforestry. Besides, population density per square kilometer in Savanna and Upper West regions are 19 and 49 respectively and that of Ashanti region is 223 (GSS 2021). More so, Ashanti region is more developed and that is a reason why farmland may become scare at some part of the region than in the Savanna and Upper West regions. These imply that all other things being equal, famers in northern Ghana will not engage in the MTS because they do not have the problem of scarcity of farmland. Therefore, plans by the Forest Commission (FC) to reforest northern Ghana requires an empirical enquiry.

Also, the MTS is convincing on paper with great potential for forest recovery but poor in governance and practice. The MTS implementation guideline is merely a “paper institution” (Orihuela et al. 2021) in that what is stipulated is not implemented. For instance, appointing MoTaG leaders and lack of constitution are clear disregard for the MTS implementation guideline which have contributed to nepotism, discretionary decision making and conflict resolution vacuum. Meanwhile, compliance to rules is essential for adaptive governance (Dietz et al. 2003; Folke et al. 2005). Implementing the MTS using the guideline would have alerted farmers that this programme is different from the previous TS. As people do not see the difference between the MTS and the TS and adequate information which would have fostered trust and compliance to the rules is missing in many cases (Dietz et al. 2003), the challenges of the erstwhile TS that necessitated its suspension is likely to resurface. Poor and landless farmers are said to be part of saboteurs of the erstwhile TS (Agyeman et al. 2003) and as they are paying to get the land and being unaware of their benefit, they are likely to retard the growth of the tree in order to have a longer period for food crops cultivation. This is highly likely to occur as the main motivation for farmers for engaging in the MTS is to have access to degraded forest reserve to cultivate food crops due to scarcity of farmland (Ros-Tonen et al. 2013; Wiersma 2020). Moreover, conflict resolution mechanism that is crucial for adaptive governance (Dietz et al. 2003) is generally lacking for people to seek redress and to contribute fair distribution of power and inclusion of farmers interest and values.

The challenges of the MTS will affect the density and growth of trees (that is if they are even planted) with consequences for forest recovery and timber revenue which will trigger reactions from traditional authorities and landowners who are allocated 15% of proceeds from the sale of trees. Traditional authorities have always been assigned part of revenue for natural resources extracted from land under their jurisdiction, sanctioned by national laws (Kumeh et al. 2021; Lujala and Narh 2020). So, if traditional authorities allow the land to be set aside as a forest reserve and the degraded part should be used for the MTS, hoping to get their share but realise that the land is being given to farmers for a fee which is jeopardizing the system, they may react. It is therefore not surprising that some chiefs offer degraded forest reserves to farmers to cultivate cocoa to stump their authority and control over the land (Kumeh et al. 2021). Their message is clear: if the MTS will not guarantee a flow of financial resources, cocoa will. Expansion of cocoa cultivation into forest reserves is one of the causes of deforestation in Ghana (Kalischek et al. 2023).

Further, farmers’ share of revenue from tree sale is vulnerable to elite capture due to lack of adequate information on the subject. According to Acheampong et al. (2016), MTS-established teak plantation will be thinned 4 times (in years 5, 10, 18 and 25) in the production time and all the stakeholders are supposed to receive their benefits accordingly. Although the programme started from 2002, there is lack of knowledge of benefit in the thinning of MTS plantations to farmers. Is it the case that the plantations are thinned and farmers are given their share or their benefits are captured? At the incepting of the MTS, Agyeman et al. (2003) doubted the FC’s capacity to compile benefit-sharing agreements which could be in the form of bonds and keep them at the Attorney-General’s Department. However, if the FC has a challenge compiling the benefit-sharing agreements, that should not prevent it from informing farmers about their share in the trees. Given that it is usually only MoTaG leaders who are aware of their potential benefit of tree revenue (Asare-Kissiedu et al. 2018; Wiersma 2020), there are delays in signing benefit sharing agreements, and lack of mechanism for sharing communally-established plantation, monetary benefit from trees is susceptible to elite capture. Marfo et al. (2012) have found that forest resource benefit capture by traditional authorities and government official is prevalent in Ghana. If trees are being harvested from the MTS plots which is one way to ensure legal timber under that Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) (Ros-Tonen et al. 2013) but farmers are neglected, sidelined and duped, that is still illegal timber which undermines the VPA.

Further, the initiative of the FC to plant trees on people’s farm could backfire. Why did the FC not give the money to farmers as was the case of the CFMP and supervise them to plant the trees? How is it possible that the FC plants trees in someone’s farm and expect the farmer to nurture and protect the trees? This clearly shows that the FC is more interested in getting farmers to do the tedious work of clearing the bush for them to plant the trees with obvious intention to deprive farmers of the benefit of revenue from the trees in the name of making sure that they meet their annual tree planting target (Wiersma 2020). The imitative is likely to discourage farmer who are willing and capable of planting trees from doing so because it does no build trust nor ensure devolution of power. But trust, devolution of power and right and formation of partnership are required for effective adaptive governance (Dietz et al. 2003; Folke et al. 2005) Farmers will focus on cultivating food crops and wait for the FC to plant the trees on their farm just as a woman has done for five years with no single tree planted (Wiersma 2020).

The MTS has great potential as a legal source of timber and economic development for the stakeholders but it might not support long-term climate mitigation as there is no clear policy objectives and strategy on climate change (Kalame et al. 2011). The MTS cannot be used to fulfil pledges to the Bonn Challenge, COP 21 or SGD 13 and 15 especially if there is no guarantee that its timber would be used for durable product like furniture that can store the sequestered carbon for a longer time. Besides, the MTS plantations is less diverse than natural forest but that is expected as the areas being used for the MTS were already degraded. It will therefore take some time for the biodiversity to be enhanced provided the exotic tree species are not invasive. Anticipating change is a requirement for adaptive management (Dietz et al. 2003; Folke et al. 2005; Karpouzoglou et al. 2016) and efforts need to be made to adjust the MTS to adequately contribute to the Bonn Challenge and the SDGs. That notwithstanding, if the MTS plots are managed well, there would still be valuable trees standing after 25 years in the case of teak (Tectona grandis) for two main reasons. First, there is a likelihood that some indigenous tree species that take a longer time to grow will naturally emerge and the fact that degraded forest reserves that are being used for the MTS still have some young trees standing. Second, teak (Tectona grandis) re-sprouts after harvesting and the likelihood of it seeds germinating is high (Wiersma 2020).

Conclusion

Reforestation is prominent on Ghana’s bioeconomy and climate policies. The country has introduced an agroforestry programme called the Modified Taungya System (MTS) in 2002 to, among other things, enrich degraded forest reserves. This review sets out to analyse the outcome of the MTS. It is found that while the MTS has contributed to food security and some restorations in south-western Ghana, the programme is largely affected by governance and practical challenges. The empirical studies point to the fact that ecological recovery under the MTS has been below optimum due to lack of information and differentiated access to degraded forest reserve as well as unexplained delays in signing agreement with farmers. Consequently, there is high probability that farmers are not planting or protecting trees effectively and elite capture of farmers’ benefit. Moreover, so far, the FC has failed to make the MTS an adaptive landscape governance by using its implementation guideline which was drafted based on lessons learnt from the failed erstwhile Taungya System (TS) and incorporate farmers suggestions into the programme. It seems the FC has not learnt adequately from the challenges of the TS.

There are still grey areas about the MTS which need further research. For instance, it will be very helpful if a nationwide evaluation of the MTS is conducted with regard to the total area of forest reserve enriched, the density of trees, farmers and communities which have benefitted from revenue from trees thinned and the state of thinned reserves. Besides, illegal logging, chainsaw lumbering and mining contribute forest degradation in Ghana (Gyamfi et al. 2021) but it is unclear whether MTS-established forests are also affected by such illegal activities or not. A research in these directions could guide forest restoration policy in the future.

Recommendation

Based on the results and analysis, this article makes five recommendations to enhance the prospects of reforestation under the MTS and its scaling.

  1. (1)

    Nationwide sensitisation on the benefit of the MTS: The FC in collaboration with the various public and private media houses in Ghana should educate the general public on the benefits of the MTS to enhance transparency and limit the potential revenue capture. Besides, agriculture is becoming less interesting to many youths in Ghana due to high cost of production and low price for farm produce. As current farmer are becoming weak (Wiersma 2020), it is through dissemination of the benefits of the MTS that could entice the youth to invest in the MTS.

  2. (2)

    Encourage adaptive landscape governance in the MTS: there should be an opportunity for local people to make changes to the implementation guideline of MTS based on their experiences. The MTS should evolve organically. It is better to have systems that are suitable to local political, economic and social contexts while simultaneously adhering to the national MTS implementation guideline than a fixed system for all.

  3. (3)

    Sign benefit sharing agreement at the time of releasing land to farmers: The FC should sign the benefit sharing agreement with farmers at the time it releases degraded forest reserve for reforestation under the MTS. The agreement should be legally binding which the FC can use to hold farmers who fail to plant or try to kill trees intentionally on their farms responsible. This means that the FC must be sure that it can provide adequate tree saplings to farmers at the beginning of the farming season before the degraded forest reserve is released.

  4. (4)

    Enrich northern forest reserves: Efforts should be made to enrich the reserves in northern Ghana because the region is already vulnerable to climate change due to the ecological zone in which it lies.

  5. (5)

    Rename the initiative of planting trees on people’s farms or the MTS: The FC should give a different label to its initiative of planting trees on people’s farm because it does not conform to the implementation guideline and it mars the progress of the MTS. Alternatively, given that many farmers do not know the difference between the MTS and the TS, the name of the programme could be changed to a term that is devoid of “taungya”. The change in name could prompt farmers to ask about the difference between the new scheme and the “taungya”. A phrase like “plant and let’s share” translated into the local languages could let farmers know that they have benefit in the revenue of the trees.