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Ecotourism as an Adaptation Strategy for Mitigating Climate Change Impacts on Local Communities Around Protected Areas in Ghana

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Handbook of Climate Change Resilience

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Abstract

Ecotourism is used as a strategy around protected areas. Its prospects for supporting conservation and livelihoods are well supported by studies. With climate change emerging as a threat to local livelihoods based on natural resources, including ecotourism because of its partial dependence on forest-based attractions, communities have developed strategies to survive. Studies on climate change tend to ignore local capacity to adapt to the climate change. Using Mognori as a case, farming households located in the Savannah Region of Ghana were purposively selected to understand how ecotourism is incorporated into the overall livelihood spectrum and its implications for households’ assets and sustenance, particularly where there is observed livelihood uncertainty because of climate change. In-depth interviews revealed how households construct their livelihoods to ensure livelihood security. For the households, ecotourism presents opportunities for livelihood diversification and sustenance. They tend to focus on short-term coping strategies at the household level by using ecotourism as livelihood diversification because it complements livelihood assets and activities. This chapter contributes to mainstreaming climate change in ecotourism development based on protected area attractions and how local communities sustain livelihoods in the context of climate change vulnerability.

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Acknowledgment

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the International Development and Research Centre (IDRC) for providing the needed funding, without which this research project would not have come to successful completion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecotourism, Recreation and Hospitality, University of Energy and Natural Resources, UENR, Sunyani, Brong Ahafo Region, Ghana

    Yaw Boakye Agyeman

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  1. Yaw Boakye Agyeman
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Correspondence to Yaw Boakye Agyeman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. International Climate Change Information and Research Programme (ICCIRP), Faculty of Life Sciences, Research and Transfer Centre Sustainable Development and Climate Change Management, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

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Agyeman, Y.B. (2020). Ecotourism as an Adaptation Strategy for Mitigating Climate Change Impacts on Local Communities Around Protected Areas in Ghana. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Handbook of Climate Change Resilience. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93336-8_159

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