In Ghana, the Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) mechanism is an innovative landscape-level planning and management tool for community conservation initiatives. The process has taken 20 years of evolution to move from an intellectual concept to a legally approved CREMA mechanism. Today over 30 CREMAs are officially approved or in various stages of the process of development in the country. The average CREMA covers about 25,000 hectares, but CREMAs can range from a thousand hectares up to a few hundred thousand hectares. The CREMA concept has been examined by at least 10 other African countries and efforts at replication are underway in a number of nearby West African states. Full-fledged CREMAs have approved constitutions, management boards, community committees; regulations backed by local by-laws and have the power to engage their own staff. CREMAs are able to incorporate under Ghanaian law and control their own revenue. All CREMAs have defined boundaries agreed by all stakeholder communities and traditional leadership upon which long-term management and regulations are agreed. As such CREMAs are an approved institutional structure for landscape planning, democratic decision-making by local leadership and benefit sharing with its stakeholders. CREMAs should be considered as promising examples of Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCA) Early CREMAs focused on wildlife and habitat protection. They developed revenues from tourism and later on from harvesting of NTFPs with premiums for organic and conservation status of the associated NTFPs. Recent developments is to see how CREMAs could develop future carbon revenues. No CREMA has realized emissions reductions revenue yet but a number are now exploring this possibility. Nature Conservation Research Centre and A Rocha Ghana in collaboration with the Wildlife Division are pioneers in the promotion and development of CREMAs in Ghana. They have gathered a wealth of knowledge and experience that they like to share with the conservation community and a broader group of stakeholders. The evolution and potential of CREMAs will be presented and discussed. As part of this session a 15 min documentary will be shown on how CREMAs changed the lives of thousands of women through the organic production of Shea nut.

1. Community Resource Management Area (CREMA) in Ghana:
A Promising Framework for Community Based Conservation
Daryl Bosu
A Rocha Ghana

2. Overview
• Disturbing Trend of Natural Resource
Management and Governance in
Ghana
• Bridging the gap with CREMAs
• Optimising CREMAs for Socio-
economic and conservation gains
• Sustaining achievements and gains for
greater impact

3. Disturbing Trend of Natural Resource Management and Governance
• Increasing population and urbanisation
• Rapid changing values of natural resource values
• Resource pressure related to substitution of
subsistence economy with market economy.
Urgent need for a home-grown customised management and governance framework
to salvage natural resource loss.
• Weakening recognition and respect for
community conserved areas.
• Inappropriate forms of recognition
• High incidence of biodiversity loss and
increasing rate of deforestation and
degradation

4. Community Resources Management Areas
(CREMAs) are physically defined geographical areas
that may encompass one or more communities that
have agreed to manage natural resources in a
sustainable manner.
Bridging the gap with CREMAs
Inclusive,
evolving, and
experience
enriching
process
Collaborative Resource Management
Policy of 2000 . Forestry Commission of
Ghana

5. • CREMAs like all sustainable natural resource
institutional frameworks has got its own challenges.
• Government needs to recognize, support and
secure community conserved areas in broader
national development agenda.
• Communities need to reorient themselves to
securing natural resources for its ecosystems
functions and pursue sustainable supply chains
Optimizing the Role and functions of CREMAs
• Need to identify and invest in strong nature linked
business options to enhance livelihoods
• Critical need to diversify financing streams that
empower communities to invest, manage and
share in the benefits of conservation of both state
reserved and natural resources in off-reserve
areas.

6. Innovative and effective
• It provides actual legal conferment of the necessary rights required to achieve efficient
localized regimes that enhance governance and ecological sustainability.
• Precursor for development of environmentally friendly business models to incentivize
conservation
Evidence of implementation and impact
• Today over 30 CREMAs covering over 700,000 hectares are officially approved or in various
stages of the process of development in the country
• Improved conservation awareness and increased collective community action and unity
Applied elsewhere or more broadly
• Adaptive and effective boundary tools for conservation and development and hence provide
unique opportunities for the implementation of innovative mechanisms such as Reducing
Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) financing and Payment of
Ecosystem Service (PES)
An inspiring solution?

7. Components that lead to success
• Adaptive home grown solution to address increasing deforestation and
degradation in off-reserve areas
• Governance system adapts existing recognized social leadership
frameworks.
Enabling factors
• State recognition through devolution of management authority and
empowerment with enforceable legal frameworks.
• Community owned process, built on self will, and informed consent
• Respect and recognition for site specific diversity in management and
governance style.
What makes it work?