One village, one dam policy and the land question
Come to think of it, water is life. No water, no life. As a country, one of the critical challenges we face is our inability to harvest and harness rain water for farming.
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Due to climate change which is now manifest, rainfall across the country has become erratic and unpredictable. It is becoming clear that we can no longer rely on rain-fed agriculture to stem up food production.
With a strong natural resource base, our socio-economic development is dependent mainly on agriculture, timber and mining. About 40 per cent of the 230,000 sq.km landmass being arable or covered with permanent crops and pasture, forests and woodland cover an additional 35 per cent.
The vision of the New Patriotic Party government for the next four years with respect to agriculture and rural development is “to modernise agriculture, improve production efficiency, achieve food security and profitability for our farmers, all aimed at significantly increasing agricultural productivity.’’
For the realisation of this vision, the present government will “facilitate the provision of community-owned and managed small-scale irrigation facilities across the country, especially northern Ghana through the ‘One Village, One Dam’ policy initiative.
A pre-requisite for the achievement of the objective of the vision is for people to believe and have faith in it, as well as be committed to participating fully in the programme to make it a success to the benefit of all stakeholders.
Land ownership
Critical to the success of this policy initiative is the availability of and access to land. In our rural areas, land provides the source of livelihood and safety net for the majority. It is trite to say that in Ghana, there is no land without an owner.
Our land tenure regime is dual in nature. It is estimated that 80 per cent and 20 per cent of our lands are held under customary and statutory tenure respectively. Basically, the allocation, use, control and transfer rights in the former are vested in the stool, clan or family.
At the basic level, the land administration and management decisions are the responsibility of the stool/skin occupants, the tendama, clan and family heads who are fiduciaries and hold the lands in trust. These decisions are, however, subject to statutory rules and regulations as the two regimes co-exist.
The acquisition of customary land by government for the speedy execution of development projects has always been a thorny issue. Indeterminate customary land boundaries, difficulty in accessing land, insecurity of tenure as a result of conflicts between and within the landowning groups, undocumented claims regarding ownership, varied and localised land disposal procedures are issues on the ground which the ‘’One Village, One Dam’’ initiative would be grappling with.
One ministry which has a significant role to play so far as the land issue is concerned is the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources which the Ministry of Agriculture would necessarily have to collaborate with. The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources has since 2003 been implementing the Land Administration Project (LAP) which is in its second phase. A lot of project activities on pilot basis have been undertaken in the areas of customary boundary demarcation, the establishment of Customary Land Secretariats (CLSs), systematic process of demarcating and documenting rights of all parcels in rural areas and ascertainment of customary law practices.
Tapping experience
The LAP is being implemented through a functional project structure. Personnel in the land sector agencies, aside from performing their normal duties, are deeply involved in the execution of various project activities nationwide.
The wealth of experience gained by personnel at the national, regional and district levels must be tapped and brought to bear on the implementation of the One Village, One Dam project activities right from initiation and planning.
Their inputs would be needed to enable the designing, developing and delivering the technical solutions to the land issues with respect to the demarcation and surveying of boundaries, value of the lands, settlement of land disputes, the documentation of the allodial title holders, subject and stranger usufructuary rights holders and other interests subsisting in the lands identified as suitable for the construction of the dams.
Equally important is the human aspect of the project. In most cases, projects flounder because the human aspect is not adequately addressed.
The economic, social, emotional and power attributes of land are such that there would be the need to engage and sensitise landowners so as to minimise resistance with respect to the release of lands. Due consideration should as well be given to the issue of compensating the affected landowners for at least their cultivated crops and permanent structures on the land.
Such an approach would ensure that the technical solution is embraced, adopted and utilised to the benefit of all.
The technical solutions and the human aspect of the construction of the dams must be managed simultaneously and in tandem so that the dam projects are finished on time, meet their objectives and the return on investment is realised.