REDD+ and Extractivism: Navigating Sustainability in Ghana’s Cocoa Landscapes

Abstract REDD+ is a global green vision that addresses climate change by reducing emissions from deforestation and enhancing carbon storage in forests while promoting sustainable forest management. Despite the implementation of REDD+ interventions in Ghana’s cocoa forests, extractivist forest practices persist. Based on official documents, interviews, and participatory observation, this article analyzes and explains the coexistence of forest-based extractivism with REDD+ in one of Ghana’s flagship REDD+ project areas. The findings show that REDD+ interventions designed for cocoa forests are not only inadequately equipped to halt Ghana’s forest-based extractivist development path but also insufficiently address the dispossession of local communities who find themselves deprived of their management and forest access rights and thus powerless to protect and restore the forest. The article argues that the carbon-based greening of the cocoa sector under REDD+ opens a new frontier for transnational accumulation while simultaneously reinforcing the legacy of extractive capitalism.