Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability in Rural West Africa pp 171–189Cite as

The Risk Frontier: Perceiving Social Transformations in Rural and Peri-urban West Africa Through a Territorial Lens

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

  • 987 Accesses

Abstract

Addressing the distinct overemphasis on rural agricultural spaces that undergirds much of the literature on local riskscapes in West Africa, the chapter seeks to elucidate how households that live on the fringes of rapidly transforming peri-urban spaces are caught in a double bind of institutional and spatial marginality. Drawing on a comparative empirical study in northern Ghana, the chapter argues that peri-urban households are facing socio-environmental risks that are similar to those experienced by their rural counterparts, while at the same time being subjected to interrelated institutional and material transformations which define such spaces as dynamic risk frontiers. In order to compare the institutional dynamics between rural and peri-urban territories, the study advances a ‘territorialization of risk’ framework that explores the social production of risk against the backdrop of changing institutional and communal structures.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Calculations based on data for the year 2012 obtained from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA Bolgatanga) and the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).

References

  • Allen, A. (2014). Peri-urbanization and the political ecology of differential sustainability. In S. Parnell & S. Oldfield (Eds.), The Routledge handbook on cities of the global south (pp. 522–538). Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Amoo-Adare, E. (2013). Spatial literacy: Contemporary Asante women’s place-making. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Annim, S., Mariwah, S., & Sebu, J. (2012). Spatial inequality and household poverty in Ghana. BWPI Working Paper No 161. Manchester: Brooks World Poverty Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Antwi-Agyei, P., Stringer, L. C., & Dougill, A. J. (2014). Livelihood adaptations to climate variability: Insights from farming households in Ghana. Regional Environmental Change, 14(4), 1615–1626.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beck, U. (2009). Critical theory of world risk society: A cosmopolitan vision. Constellations, 16(1), 3–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cannon, T. (1994). Vulnerability analysis and the explanation of ‘Natural’ Disasters. In A. Varley (Ed.), Disasters, development and environment (pp. 13–30). New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • CFSVA. (2012). Ghana comprehensive food security and vulnerability analysis. Focus on Northern Ghana. World Food Programme, Rome.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chant, S., & Jones, G. A. (2005). Youth, gender and livelihoods in West Africa: Perspectives from Ghana and the Gambia. Children’s Geographies, 3(2), 185–199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cofie, O. O., & Drechsel, P. (2007). Water for food in the cities: The growing paradigm of irrigated (Peri)-Urban agriculture and its struggle in sub-saharan Africa. African Water Journal, 1(1), 23–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, E., & Pratten, D. (2015). Ethnographies of uncertainty in Africa: An introduction. In E. Cooper & D. Pratten (Eds.), Ethnographies of uncertainty in Africa (pp. 1–16). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design. Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches, 4th Edn. Sage, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. New Perspectives Quarterly, 23(2), 6–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Drechsel, P., Graefe, S., Sonou, M., & Cofie, O. O. (2006). Informal irrigation in urban West Africa: An overview. IMWI Research Report No 102. Colombo: International Water Management Institute.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eguavoen, I. (2013). Climate change and trajectories of blame in Northern Ghana. Anthropological Notebooks, 19(1), 5–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elden, S. (2006). The state of territory under globalization. Empire and the politics of reterritorialization. Thamyris/Intersecting, 12, 47–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ericson, R. V. (2007). Crime in an insecure world. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • FAO. (2012). Gender inequalities in rural employment in Ghana: An overview. Rome: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

    Google Scholar 

  • Future Earth. (2014). Future Earth strategic research agenda 2014. Paris: International Council for Science (ICSU).

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghana Statistical Service. (2012). Population and housing census 2010. Summary Report of Final Results. Ghana Statistical Service, Accra.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghana Statistical Service. (2013). Population and housing census 2010. Regional Analytical Report—Upper East Region. Ghana Statistical Service, Accra.

    Google Scholar 

  • GLSS 5. (2008). Ghana living standards survey. Report of the Fifth Round. Ghana Statistical Service, Accra.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gough, K. V., & Yankson, P. W. K. (2000). Land markets in African cities: The case of peri-urban Ghana. Urban Studies, 37(13), 2485–2500.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gyasi, E. A., Fosu, M., Kranjac-Berisavljevic, G., Mensah, A. M., Obeng, F., Yiran, G. A. B., & Fuseini, I. (2014). Building urban resilience: Assessing urban and peri-urban agriculture in tamale, Ghana. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ILO. (2005). Working out of poverty in Ghana. A case study of the Ghana decent work pilot programme. Geneva: International Labour Organisation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klinenberg, E. (2006). Blaming the victims: Hearsay, labeling, and the hazards of quick-hit disaster ethnography. American Sociological Review, 71(4), 689–698.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laube, W., Schraven, B., & Awo, M. (2012). Smallholder adaptation to climate change: Dynamics and limits in northern Ghana. Climatic Change, 111(3–4), 753–774.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Laux, P., Kunstmann, H., & Bárdossy, A. (2008). Predicting the regional onset of the rainy season in West Africa. International Journal of Climatology, 28, 329–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mabin, A., Butcher, S., & Bloch, R. (2013). Peripheries, suburbanisms and change in sub-Saharan African cities. Social Dynamics, 39(2), 167–190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mbiba, B., & Huchzermeyer, M. (2002). Contentious development: Peri-urban studies in sub-Saharan Africa. Progress in Development Studies, 2(2), 113–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meyers, G. A. (2010). Social construction of peri-urban places and alternative planning in Zanzibar. African Affairs, 109(437), 575–595.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mohan, G. (2002). The disappointments of civil society: the politics of NGO intervention in northern Ghana. Political Geography, 21, 125–154.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nyantakyi-Frimpong, H., & Bezner-Kerr, R. (2015). The relative importance of climate change in the context of multiple stressors in semi-arid Ghana. Global Environmental Change, 32, 40–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien, K. (2012). Global environmental change II: From adaptation to deliberate transformation. Progress in Human Geography, 36(5), 667–676.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quaye, W. (2008). Food security situation in northern Ghana, coping strategies and related constraints. African Journal of Agricultural Research, 3(5), 334–342.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rademacher-Schulz, C., Salifu, E. M. (2012). Where the rain falls project. Case study: Ghana. Results from Nadowli District, Upper West Region. Report No 3. United Nations University (UNU-EHS), Bonn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rebotier, J. (2012). Vulnerability conditions and risk representations in Latin-America: Framing the territorializing urban risk. Global Environmental Change, 22, 391–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ribot, J. (2011). Vulnerability before adaptation: Toward transformative climate action. Global Environmental Change, 21, 1160–1162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ribot, J. (2014). Cause and response: Vulnerability and climate in the Anthropocene. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(5), 667–705.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schulz, K., Siriwardane, R. (2015). Depoliticized and technocratic? Normativity and the politics of transformative adaptation. ESG Working Paper No 33. Earth System Governance Project, Lund & Amsterdam.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sennett, R. (2012). Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, D., & Thompson, D. (2006). The peri-urban interface: Approaches to sustainable natural and human resource use. London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sow, P., Adaawen, S. A., & Scheffran, J. (2014). Migration, social demands and environmental change amongst the Frafra of Northern Ghana and the Biali in Northern Benin. Sustainability, 6, 375–398.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trefon, T. (2009). Hinges and fringes: Conceptualising the peri-urban in central Africa. In F. Locatelli & P. Nugent (Eds.), African cities: Competing claims on urban spaces (pp. 15–36). Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Ubink, J. M. (2008). In the land of the chiefs: Customary law, land conflicts, and the role of the state in peri-urban Ghana. Leiden: Leiden University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • UNDP Ghana. (2010). Bolgatanga municipality. Human development report 2010. Resource Endowment, Investment Opportunities and the Attainment of MDGs. Accra: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

    Google Scholar 

  • Vanderpuye-Orgle, J., & Barrett, C. B. (2009). Risk management and social visibility in Ghana. African Development Review, 21, 5–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yaro, J. A. (2012). Re-inventing traditional land tenure in the era of land commoditization: Some consequences in peri-urban northern Ghana. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 94(4), 351–368.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yaro, J. A. (2013a). The perception of and adaptation to climate variability/change in Ghana by small-scale and commercial farmers. Regional Environmental Change, 13, 1259–1272.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yaro, J. A. (2013b). Neoliberal globalisation and evolving local traditional institutions: Implications for access to resources in rural northern Ghana. Review of African Political Economy, 40(137), 410–427.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yaro, J. A. (2013c). The story of northern Ghana. In J. A. Yaro (Ed.), Rural development in northern Ghana (pp. 1–16). New York: Nova Science Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported through a fieldwork grant from the Dr. Hermann Eiselen Doctoral Programm of the Foundation fiat panis and by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the project WaterPower (reference number 01 LN 1316 A). Moreover, we thank the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) for their generous logistical support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Governance & Sustainability Lab, Faculty of Regional & Environmental Sciences, University of Trier, Trier, Germany

    Karsten Schulz

  2. Working Group Development & Knowledge Sociology, Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology, Bremen, Germany

    Rapti Siriwardane

Authors
  1. Karsten Schulz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Rapti Siriwardane
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Karsten Schulz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Geography and Resource Devl., University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana

    Joseph A. Yaro

  2. Dept. of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Jan Hesselberg

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Schulz, K., Siriwardane, R. (2016). The Risk Frontier: Perceiving Social Transformations in Rural and Peri-urban West Africa Through a Territorial Lens. In: Yaro, J., Hesselberg, J. (eds) Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability in Rural West Africa. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31499-0_10

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation