Building coastal resilience through an integrated approach: Lessons from Ghana

This case study describes a CDKN innovation project in Ghana that used ecosystems- and risk-based approaches to integrate climate resilience into development for coastal communities, emphasizing the necessity of bottom-up planning and multi-stakeholder engagement.

• Ghana lacks a comprehensive policy or development framework for managing climate-related risks in coastal areas, resulting in climate issues being separated from coastal zone protection. Planning and risk reduction decisions are primarily top-down, which prevents the local ownership and content required for effective grassroots action on climate compatible development and disaster risk reduction.
• Climate change is causing the loss of livelihoods on Ghana's coast through the destruction of public infrastructure, commercial assets, and fishing equipment by unusually high ocean waves, as well as the degradation of fish breeding grounds due to saline intrusion into freshwater systems.
• Effective coastal resilience and climate compatible development in Ghana require integrating community knowledge, multi-stakeholder engagement, and 'learning-by-doing'. Local ownership and the upscaling of research results are achieved when the concerns of climate-vulnerable people are included in the appraisal of objectives and the formulation of research questions. Furthermore, contingency plans for climate-related risks are more efficient and require fewer resources when created at local levels rather than externally.

APA

Climate and Development Knowledge Network (2014). Building coastal resilience through an integrated approach: Lessons from Ghana. https://cdkn.org/resource/inside-story-coastal-resilience-through-an-integrated-approach-ghana

Chicago

Climate and Development Knowledge Network. Building coastal resilience through an integrated approach: Lessons from Ghana. 2014. https://cdkn.org/resource/inside-story-coastal-resilience-through-an-integrated-approach-ghana.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate and Development Knowledge Network |title=Building coastal resilience through an integrated approach: Lessons from Ghana |date=15 September 2014 |url=https://cdkn.org/resource/inside-story-coastal-resilience-through-an-integrated-approach-ghana |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climateanddevelopmentknowledgenetwork2014building, author = {{Climate and Development Knowledge Network}}, title = {{Building coastal resilience through an integrated approach: Lessons from Ghana}}, institution = {Climate and Development Knowledge Network}, year = {2014}, month = sep, url = {https://cdkn.org/resource/inside-story-coastal-resilience-through-an-integrated-approach-ghana}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }