**8. Conclusion and Recommendations**

We conclude that fringe communities enjoy some benefits and limited access to the forest reserves, but they do not know their tenure rights, user-rights and responsibilities to the reserves. Most front-line staff of FSD are unaware of the userrights of fringe communities which is the reason for denying access of the reserves to community members. Improving collaborative management means changing the perceptions and attitudes of communities and frontline staff of FSD, respectively, and securing communities rights to the reserves.

## **8.1 Recommendations**

To serve the interest of fringe communities and secure their commitment to responsible collaborative management of forest reserves, we recommend the following: The forestry department should educate community members on their tenure, rights and responsibilities to the reserves and involve them in the processes of decision-making. FSD in collaboration with collaborative forest management Unit (CFMU) of the Ghana forestry commission, should improve the capacity of their frontline staff on the rights and responsibilities of communities in CFM so as to avoid the unlawful denial of fringe communities of what rightfully belong to them.

Forest Fringe communities in the Northern region are not enjoying social responsibility benefits and royalties because the forest reserves were gazetted mainly to protect major rivers within the region. Meanwhile the beneficiaries of these rivers are the Ghana Water Company and the Volta River Authority who are making huge financial gains against the restrictions of right to communities. It is thus recommended that Government ensures that the two beneficiary companies give at least 0.5% of their revenue to FC, fringe communities and land owners as their social responsibility contributions. The part given to the FC could be used to develop the forest reserves through plantation development and to facilitate their activities with communities. That of the communities could be used to provide social amenities for them while the part for the land owners will boost their interest and motivate them to support their communities in sustainable management of forest reserves. This will, in the long term, benefit the two companies since the continuous protection of the rivers depends on the sustainable management of these forest reserves; the success of which in turn depends on the continuous support and cooperation of the fringe communities.

**Author details**

Rikiatu Husseini<sup>1</sup>

**93**

\*, Stephen B. Kendie<sup>2</sup> and Patrick Agbesinyale<sup>2</sup>

*Rights and Responsibilities: The Reality of Forest Fringe Communities in the Northern Region…*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93550*

1 Department of Forestry and Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Natural Resources and Environment, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana

2 Department of Integrated Development Studies, School for Development Studies,

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

\*Address all correspondence to: rikihuss@yahoo.com; rhusseini@uds.edu.gh

University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast-Ghana, Ghana

provided the original work is properly cited.

*Rights and Responsibilities: The Reality of Forest Fringe Communities in the Northern Region… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93550*
