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. 2024 Oct 10;26(6):656-672.
doi: 10.1080/1523908X.2024.2410899. eCollection 2024.

Chiefs and floods: hybrid governance and co-production of flood risk adaptation in Tamale, Ghana

Samuel Agyei-Mensah  1 , George Owusu  2 , Cynthia Awuni  1 , Ben Howard  3 , Issahaka Fuseini  4 , Wouter Buytaert  3 , Frans Berkhout  5
Affiliations

Chiefs and floods: hybrid governance and co-production of flood risk adaptation in Tamale, Ghana

Samuel Agyei-Mensah et al. J Environ Policy Plan. .

Abstract

Climate change is changing physical and social risks facing people in African cities. Emerging awareness is beginning to stimulate a wide range of adaptive responses. These responses are playing out in a complex institutional and governance context which shape their effectiveness and legitimacy. Employing a hybrid governance approach, we investigate the development of flooding and flood protection in the context of urban development in Tamale, Ghana. We argue that the interplay between traditional and state-based authority shapes the market for land, the regulation of land use and the provision of urban services, including flood protection. Hybrid governance influences the types of knowledge applied to urban problem-solving, the legitimacy of choices made, the human and other resources that can be deployed in building community resilience and the willingness to act in the provision of public goods by communities. We suggest how the existing hybrid governance setting could be strengthened to achieve more effective and legitimate adaptation to dynamic flood risks under climate change in Tamale, with lessons for other West African contexts.

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Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Map of Tamale (in supplemental material).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Physical condition of engineered storm drains in Tamale (2023) (in supplemental material).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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