Prolonged droughts and rising temperatures in Ghana’s Upper West Region are reducing maize, millet, and cowpea harvests, leaving communities more vulnerable to food insecurity.
Forests that once mitigated these pressures are also under strain. The Ambalara Forest Reserve is central to local life, offering water regulation, biodiversity, and access to forest goods like fruit and medicinal herbs that are economically and culturally significant. Kamasa Dorothy, alumna of the Local Climate Response training is working with indigenous women to protect the forest and support their communities.
Kamasa and her colleagues stand in front of a sign of the Ambalara Forest.
Preserving the Ambalara Forest
Kamasa Dorothy states a simple truth: while they are the most affected, communities with deep knowledge of the land are best positioned to protect it. As founder and Exec-
utive Director of the Centre for Women and Food Security in Ghana, Kamasa has dedicated her work to ensuring that Indigenous women—who carry much of this ecological knowledge—are recognised as leaders in climate resilience.
In 2023, Kamasa joined The Hague Academy’s Local Climate Response course to learn new strategies for supporting women and exploring community-led approaches to climate adaptation. The training became the foundation for her Back Home Action Plan, a project that encouraged indigenous women around the Ambalara Forest to share long-established best practices in caring for revered tree species or making use of traditional fire belt practices against bush fires.
Through workshops and training sessions, Kamasa helped 826 community members, most of whom were women, develop their skills in sustainable agriculture, agroforestry, and climate-smart practices. The programme also encouraged women to take on leadership positions by providing training in governance, dispute resolution, and advocacy.
Visible Growth in Female Climate Leadership and Nature Conservation
Conservation efforts grew in tandem with Kamasa’s women-led initiative. Women’s groups began monitoring the forest reserve and contributing to its protection as both an ecological and cultural site. New sustainable farming practices are now reversing low soil fertility, diversifying local livelihoods, and providing good alternatives to heavily exploited forest resources. This helps alleviate the economic pressure faced by local communities and helps protect the reserve.
‘People were cutting trees because there were few other options to earn an income,’ Kamasa explained.
At the same time, traditional knowledge was documented and preserved in conservation practices, reinforcing the link between cultural heritage and climate resilience. In 2024, Kamasa’s team cooperated with the local authorities to establish a rehabilitated forest area and opened it to visitors. A sign at the entrance (see picture above) officially recognises Indigenous women for their leadership and local expertise as ecological stewards.
Kamasa and a group of indigenous women are working in a field by the Ambalara forest.
A Community-led Approach Leads to Long-Term Impact
Kamasa emphasises that the key to the project’s outcomes was its bottom-up and local approach, allowing the initiative to grow organically.
This approach also helped overcome project barriers along the way. Kamasa ensured that the women could steer the project. This inclusive approach not only built trust but also gave the women the confidence to become advocates for preserving the forest, thereby breaking cultural norms that prevent them from speaking openly. As part of thr advocacy activities, they developed networks and found new partners to collaboratie with. Lastly, Kamasa shared that focusing on local advocacy in the intial phase helped them better navigate Ghana’s complex environmental policy network.
Reflecting on her experience, Kamasa highlights the modest beginnings of the initiative which later developed into a larger campaign for environmental justice and women’s empowerment:
“The original Back Home Action Plan was only $8,000. With small but committed teams, everyone can make a difference.”
Her message is clear: Indigenous women are the first link in the value chain. If we want to protect forests as sources of food security and do it in a sustainable way, indigenous women should be the leaders, not just contributors to climate resilience.
Increase your knowledge to strengthen the climate resilience of your community!
If you want to know more about increasing local resilience to climate change by strengthening the capacity of local communities, women and authorities, we invite you to join our open training on Local Climate Response. The course provides you with a conceptual framework, as well as practical tools for developing local policies for adapting and mitigating climate change and offers an opportunity for peer learning with fellow participants and Dutch practitioners.