Disasters, particularly recurring small-scale natural disasters of floods and droughts have been affecting West African (WA) communities, impacting particularly weak households. These losses have been significantly high over the last decade due to increasing climate variability and inherently depressed socio-economic systems. However, to date, few studies have attempted to understand the vulnerability profiles in WA to these multiple hazards across several scales. A considerable number of studies predict the impacts of droughts and floods hazards, but many do so at a very coarse scale and without any participatory process, as a result, they are unable to predict localized impacts. Despite many efforts put in vulnerability assessments, there has been limited success in simultaneously traversing scale and hierarchy and the need for upscaling risk indices is important to understand the effects of cross scale interactions. To address these gaps, this thesis (i) explored methods to involve at-risk populations in local communities in a bottom-up participatory process as opposed to the classical top-down, single scale approaches and (ii) assessed the risks from multi-hazard perspectives in a coupled Socio-Ecological System (SES). The thesis also (iii) explored appropriate methodologies that can reflect the spatial variability of flood hazard intensity at community level. Building on these investigations, the thesis finally (iv) introduced a novel risk index upscaling procedure to upscale risk and vulnerability indices across multiple scales. The thesis used several methods ranging from rural participatory methods, statistical, Geographic Information System (GIS), remote sensing and introduced the innovative concept of Community Impact Score (CIS). The results show that more than half of the designated local level indicators and over two thirds of the macro scale indicators are rarely used in present risk assessments in the region. Additionally, although an indicator may be common to three countries, their differential rankings will result in differences in explaining the risks faced by people in different societies. Empirical validation of a flood hazard map using the statistical confusion matrix and the principles of participatory GIS show that flood hazard areas could be mapped at an accuracy ranging from 77% to 81%. These high mapping accuracies notwithstanding, the flood index categories may change under conditions of very high rainfall intensities beyond the anomalies used to construct the model. To this end, studies that aim at understanding projected flood intensities under varying rainfall conditions beyond the anomalies used in this study are recommended. This is important to determine the trajectory of flood safe havens or hotspots across an entire study area. The study also develops two important indices, The West Sudanian Community Vulnerability Index (WESCVI) and The West Sudanian Community Risk Index (WESCRI). The underlying factors constituting the two indices are the elements of risk and vulnerability profiles of communities in West Africa. The WESCVI and WESCRI should help planners and policy makers to analyse and finally reduce vulnerability and risk. To evaluate the results of the risk indices, this thesis introduces a novel technique to validate the results of complex aggregation methods. Based on up to date knowledge, the CIS concept is the first in the available literature of risk assessment. The thesis also provides a theoretical concept to upscale risk and vulnerability indicators from watershed to higher spatial scales. Further studies are however recommended to apply these theoretical concepts. A conclusion of the thesis is that while it has neither been optimal to completely neglect classical approaches nor to take as an absolute fact opinion from local experts, more emphasis should be paid to the later in risk assessment that is supposed to serve the very people on whose behalf the assessment is done. Attempts should therefore be made in finding mechanisms where the two approaches could interact fruitfully and complement each other.

Household socio-economic, population and migration dynamics in the Vea catchment.

Ghana has managed to become one of the fastest growing economies in the world with a vibrant agricultural market. The country could be a prime example of successful, pro-poor development following economic liberalisation. Though first change is visible even in traditionally impoverished areas of the north, namely the Upper East Region, hunger and chronic poverty are still prevalent. Yet, after decades of restricted public expenditure, ‘pro-poor’ agricultural policies could now be put in place, to actively improve smallholder lives in the area by various forms of government support. Similarly, foreign development agencies have recently become more engaged in supporting the local agricultural sector. All actors of current relevance have thereby pursued a value chain approach to developing the markets and livelihoods of northern Ghanaian agriculturalists. The contribution to pro-poor, ‘sustainable’ development, however, remains unclear as at now. This study is therefore concerned with how market dynamics and interventions have influenced ‘sustainable development’ of the vulnerable and poor in an emerging economy like Ghana. To do so, the study takes a look at smallholder livelihood systems in the Upper East Region of the country. Here, local peasant society is confronted with environmental changes, economic globalisation processes and interventions in agricultural value chains by the local Ministry of Food and Agriculture and foreign donors like USAID. To grasp the impact of market dynamics and interventions within this multidimensional context, this study argues for a combination of a holistic livelihood and a more specific value chain and production network approach as a useful conceptual background. Given this theoretic backdrop, data was collected for over 10 months in two villages of the Upper East, namely in Biu and Mirigu, with a focus on tomato, chili and rice, products of major significance to locals. The main methods applied in the field included qualitative as much as quantitative approaches. Farmer focus group discussions (n=37), in-depth farmer interviews and farm budgets (n=47) were the primary source of data gathered. Expert/key-informant interviews (n=70) and expert group discussions (n=2) were held. A household head survey (n=177) and an expert survey (n=25) were used to check hypotheses previously generated by qualitative methods. Primary and secondary data for tomato, chili, rice and partly also shea value chains was collected. Secondary data, such as confidential government and NGO documents, allow an insider view into farmers’ access to subsidies and support. An archive survey of church diaries dating back to 1905, enable a view on local developments in a long-term, historic perspective. This study thereby yields a number of insights with concern for conceptual approaches to the issue of understanding the pro-poor impact of markets, their dynamics and interventions within these. Livelihood analysis proved to be an indispensable approach to understanding important aspects of people-centred, human development potentials and constraints in a local environmental and institutional context. Value chain and production network analysis provided further fruitful insights on market dynamics, their structural outlines, their basic rationales and market terms for the successful participation of locals. It can therefore be concluded that both of these basic notions, either people- or market-centred approaches, should be conceptually merged to advance future research on the pro-poor effect of markets and interventions within them, to specifically address questions of what is here understood as ‘livelihood upgrading’. This study further contributes to an understanding of central aspects of local development and possible future avenues to achieving greater livelihood sustainability through government or donor development interventions. Most significantly, it became clear that ‘positive’, pro-poor market dynamics are also encountered at a local level, but cannot be made use of by spatially and socially marginalised, vulnerable and poor smallholders. That is mainly due to elite capture and corrupt practices, ultimately a question of mal-governance, a lack of grass-roots participation and a disregard for societal dimensions within which interventions are interwoven. Furthermore, neither environmental degradation nor present or future environmental changes, especially climatic ones and those with regard to soils, are accounted for. Interventions thereby remain far below their possible impact and even contribute to a loss of the natural resource base, aside the fact that they further increase an already high level socio-economic inequality. In the face of recent economic awakening, despite globalisation tendencies, future efforts in enabling sustainable development at local level must thus increasingly embrace environmental and, mostly, societal concerns in their concepts and daily practice.