Research Methods

3.3.1 Research Questions

This research examined how discourses of conservation and development were mobilized and employed as a means to address issues of deforestation, conservation, and rural development in the case of this CREMA. Specifically, it looked at the

contradictions and gaps between these discourses and the practices they enabled. This dissertation’s data collection and analysis were shaped around two major research questions:

Empirical inquiry for this research question concentrated on the following issues: (a) community members’ narrative of their engagement with the projects and (b) the environmental, social, and economic arguments they use to rationalize their participation.

(2) How is that participation achieved?

Empirical inquiry for this research question focused on: (a) how discourses of conservation and development were employed and promoted as a means to address issues of deforestation, conservation, livelihood security and rural inclusion, (b) how these impact how community members evaluated, understood, and anticipated the project benefits and impacts.

The interview guide and the operational questions related to these central questions are listed in the Appendices.

3.3.2 IRB and Permissions

Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of the University of South Carolina-Columbia (April 25, 2012) and the study received an IRB exempt status. This meant my research was not going to be monitored by the IRB assuming the project did not change. However, I was still required to fulfill my ethical obligations regarding transparency and accountability to my study participants, and therefore made provision for obtaining informed consent. A letter in English and Twi was handed out and read aloud to inform participants about the purpose of the interviews (see Appendices). I did not obtain formal written consent from interviewees because the respondents expressed their consent verbally to participate in the interviews, and because written consent among a population with such low literacy is not more meaningful than solid verbal consent efforts.

Once I received the IRB permission, the team leader of the Ghana RFGI program wrote a letter of introduction for me and my research, which I then used as an entrée into the study area. This letter also served as an official permission to research in Ghana.

3.3.3 Living Arrangements and Self-Presentation

I arrived in Ghana on March 25, 2012, and lived in the FORIG guest house in Kumasi for the first couple of weeks. As a member of the RFGI team, I also had some research responsibilities and therefore had to be in Kumasi for the first couple of weeks. During this period, I was primarily reviewing secondary gray literature and publications that were not available online. I also prepared for fieldwork, interviewing candidates to serve as my research assistant/interpreter. The Ghana Team leader helped me get in touch with potential candidates, but it is hard to find someone who was willing to stay and travel with me for extended periods of time. On the other hand, it was not feasible to find interpreters closer to the field site because we did not have prior contacts at the study site. After interviewing two female and one male candidate, I choose a female25 college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in natural resource management and because of her prior experience in conducting forestry-related field work.

The first few weeks in Kumasi were also helpful in identifying the key institution and actors relevant to my research—the Resource Management Support Centre (RMSC) in Kumasi, the technical wing of Ghana’s FC. Through the point of contacts in RMSC

25 _{In patriarchal societies, women are often perceived as less threatening and more responsible}

than men; colleagues in Ghana advised me against hiring a male RA because they were seen as troublemakers—getting drunk or involved with local women at the study site, issues with which they had several prior instances.

and FORIG, I also received the contact information and names of the high-level actors26 involved in the implementation of the two focal interventions at the study site. I did not start my formal interviews until I received clearance from the IRB. The Ghana RFGI team leader gave me the contact information of the IUCN project officer who was based in Accra. I emailed her, and she told me to come and visit the site in the first week of April, when the IUCN, in collaboration with the District Administration, was planning a workshop for the Multi-Stakeholder Platform of REDD+ at the pilot site in Wassa. We arrived in Asankragwa, the district headquarters of the Wassa Amenfi district on April 3, 2012,27 and spend the next two days observing the proceedings of the workshop. There were participants from five villages who attended the workshop, which was meant to share the findings of an earlier Forests-Poverty Toolkit28 assessment conducted by an NGO, Participatory Development Associates, on behalf of IUCN. This assessment was also seen by IUCN as a means to improve the design and execution of REDD+ activities and plans.

Attending the workshop therefore also served another purpose, that is, presenting myself to the residents of the district and justifying my presence in the area. I introduced myself as a graduate student from the United States interested in studying forest-related

26 _{These included IUCN officials, as well as officials with the Forestry Commission, Wildlife}

Division, and Arocha-Ghana.

27 _{I arrived in Kumasi, Ghana on March 23, 2012. The district headquarters of Wassa Amenfi}

West is about seven hours’ drive from Accra and six hours from Kumasi. The requirements of my field research grant required that I collaborate with my colleagues at the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana, Kumasi and complete the official paperwork.

28 _{The toolkit is used to collect qualitative and quantitative data on forest dependency and}

governance issues. It can estimate wealth ranking based on locally identified indicators (IUCN 2011).

issues in Ghana. After the workshop had ended, I sat down with the Chairman and the Secretary of the CREMA. We three were gathered under the shade of a tree, surrounded by a group of workshop participants from a distance that allowed them to hear fragments of our conversations without being considered intrusive and disrespectful. The two senior men were both excited and perplexed with my curiosity in the CREMA and what was happening in the area. They were also genuinely interested in me and my background, relentlessly questioning me about my family, my country, and my marital status while few senior women hollered and teased them. They thought I was “a brave Indian woman” to have traveled so far to learn about their country and probably had few magic tricks29 up my sleeves, but offered me a place to stay in their respective villages, in case I decided to pursue my research there.

After spending a week in Asankragwa, we returned to Kumasi on April 11 to prepare for the extended field work. We returned to the field in the first week of May. I was based in Asankragwa from May till November, except for the trips to attend RFGI- related meetings (in Kumasi, Senegal, and Accra), and conduct interviews with policy makers in other parts of Ghana (Figure 3.3).