ABSTRACT
This chapter describes an adaptive collaborative management case that evolved from a serious conflict between several villages and guards of a protected area in the Greater Afram Plains (GAP) in January, 1998. The collaborative management process successfully averted armed conflict over the use of the protected area. This sort of conflict is pervasive in protected area management, certainly in Ghana and throughout the world. In Ghana, as a result of desertification, the movement south of displaced subsistence farmers is placing pressure on protected areas. The farmers seek places to settle and practice slash and burn farming techniques that both worsen the desertification and undermine national efforts to preserve forests and wildlife. Furthermore, wildlife poaching is a serious concern in Ghana, as elsewhere in subSaharan Africa, and the Ghana government is engaged in armed struggle with organized poaching operations in several places to enforce restrictions on the use of protected areas. This is the environmental context that settlers in and around protected areas find themselves and, thus, the potential for conflict to escalate to violence is high. In addition, because the authority of the central government is evolving vis-a-vis the traditional authority of chiefs, traditional conflict approaches, though important, have limited effectiveness.
