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REACH


Resilience Against Climate Change (REACH): Sustainable Development through Climate Resilient Agricultural Production and Planning Systems

 Resilience Against Climate Change (REACH) is an European Union (EU) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) co-funded project that aims to address the increasing effects of climate change on the agricultural sector in Northern Ghana, with a particular focus on smallholder farmers. As  64.4% of the population in Northern Ghana resides in rural areas and relies on agriculture as their main livelihood, it is crucial to enhance resilience and promote sustainable development in this sector.The project is implemented together with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) and the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralization, and Rural Development (MLGDRD).

The objective of the REACH project is to enable a sustainable and inclusive improvement in the rural economy through enhanced implementation of gender-sensitive climate adaptation practices in the EUGAP targeted communities in Northern Ghana by 2025. It focuses on implementing these practices in fourteen districts across the Upper West, Savannah, and North East Regions of Ghana. These districts include all 11 districts in the Upper West Region, Mamprugu Moagduri in the North East Region, and Sawla-Tuna-Kalba and North Gonja in the Savannah Region.

 

Key Strategies:

  1. Institutional-Level Planning: REACH supports the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in incorporating Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) into their planning processes. It also ensures the sustainability of activities in their Medium-Term Development Plans (MTDPs). The project provides modern IT infrastructure and training to enhance collection, management, analysis, and visualization of georeferenced data. Additionally, the project facilitates the digitization and safe storage of planning documents through a digital library software.
  2. Community Action Planning and Natural Resource Management: REACH is assisting 200 communities in developing climate-resilient Community Action Plans (CAPs) that incorporate land use maps. Further it establishes a funding mechanism to mainstream the developed CAPs into the District Medium-Term Development Plans. This initiative empowers communities to take proactive measures to address climate change and improve their natural resource management.
  3. The project builds capacities for the adoption of Conservation Agriculture (CA) and agroforestry at the household level. The Babile Agricultural Research Station and the Damongo Agricultural College are resourced to disseminate new knowledge on Conservation Agriculture and train Farmers, Extension Agents as well as representatives from NGOs and the Private Sector. By encouraging environmentally sound farming practices, REACH aims to improve climate resilience. As part of this effort, the project has introduced 1,800 farmers and 38 extension agents to CA as well as facilitated the planting of 46,000 cashew seedlings and 50,000 trees in collaboration with partners, promoting agroforestry and climate mitigation.

 

REACH as part of the European Union Ghana Agricultural Program (EU GAP)

The European Union is investing EUR 132 million through EUGAP to drive agricultural development in North Western Ghana. EUGAP comprises three complementary Pillars: The Market Oriented Agriculture Programme Pillar, the Productive Investments in the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone Pillar and the Resilience Against Climate Change (REACH) Pillar.

The projects under the EU GAP work complementary: The Market-Oriented Agriculture Programme adopts a value chain approach, supporting crops like rice, sorghum, groundnut, soybean, vegetable, mango, and cashew. It is implemented by GIZ through the Market-Oriented Agriculture Programme (MOAP-NW).  The Productive Investments in the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone Pillar focuses on providing communities with essential resources such as dams, water pumping stations, boreholes, feeder roads, and storage facilities as well as solutions to finance investments in agriculture. It is implemented among others through the World Bank and Agence Française de Développement (AFD). A further complementary component of REACH is REACH Social Transformation Research (STR). It is researching the effects of social transformation due to changing environmental conditions. This is being implemented by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI).