Mary Ocansey is a climate-smart smallholder farmer based just outside the Ghanaian capital of Accra, in Ada East District. She used to struggle to make a living out of her dwindling and pest-vulnerable tomato crop and would despair that chemical fertilizers and pesticides, too expensive for her limited means, might be her only solution. But that changed after she took part in a local government initiative, backed by UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), that embraced regenerative farming techniques, increasing her production and income.
A mother of seven, Ocansey wanted the hours she spent tending her 10,000 square mile farm by hand to bring a better return for her family, so she took part in a locally devised training course run by her local authority for the district’s smallholder farmers. She learned how to use natural products to make environmentally friendly repellents for vermin and bugs. She applies fertilizer to her soil, making it herself from natural by-products and waste. And she rotates her crops, to maximise biodiversity and restore the soil.
“I have acquired adequate skills in pesticide preparation and pest control. I have applied this skill in my one-hectare vegetable farm,” said Ocansey, standing on her farm, where she now grows a mix of produce to limit pest proliferation and reduce nutrient depletion of the soil. “I have also adopted the intercropping technique during the planting season, and recorded higher yields than before.”
“With the reduced cost of farming and yield maximization, most households and smallholder farmers in my community have good yield, food sufficiency, and [say they have] improved living standards,” she added.
Locally led solutions scale impact nationally
Ms Ocansey is one of over a million people in Ghana living in one of 13 local authorities that is benefitting from UNCDF-backed resilience-building actions ). Of these local authorities, six received funds allocated to UNCDF by Norway for climate-smart investments, such as the regenerative farming initiatives in Ada East District. L In all 13 districts, funds are channelled to the local government through the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL), a UNCDF-designed mechanism for locally led adaptation to the impacts of climate change.
UNCDF channels performance-Based Climate Resilience Grants to local governments using national fiscal transfer systems. This, in turn strengthens their national accounting and compliance procedures. Adherence to process and positive results are needed to unlock additional funding cycles, thereby incentivizing strong results and rewarding the best performing local authorities with larger grants. This UNCDF approach is designed to build capacities over time, strengthening local governments’ ability to take a leading role in efforts to respond to climate change and make a meaningful contribution to national climate strategies, including Ghana’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP). The NAP process, part of the 2016 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, seeks to identify medium and long-term adaptation needs, reduce vulnerability to climate change and integrate adaptation into development planning.
As part of this commitment to support local governments like Ada East District and building their capacities at the subnational level, communities take part in inclusive consultations with their local authority to identify the climate investments that will benefit the most people. The approach, developed and refined over more than ten years, is now widely recognized. UNCDF and partner country experience in implementing this inclusive and locally led approach provides the basis for an international standard: ISO 14930 – the International Standard Organization provides frameworks for best practices across many industries and sectors. Thanks to Norway’s support, UNCDF was able to implement the LoCAL Facility and advance circular economy approaches and build climate-smart agricultural practices in six Ghanaian districts. Funds of $1.3 million were channelled to three districts as part of an initial pilot phase in Effutu Municipal, Fanteakwa North and Ada East District. They are known nationally as LoCAL-ACE.
Smallholder farmers are central to Ghana’s economy
The needs are great. Over half of the Ghanaian labour force is engaged in the agricultural sector and over 60 percent of their farms , like Ms Ocansey’s, are less than 1.2 hectares in size. Smallholder farmers are central to the national economy. But rising temperatures, fluctuating rainfall and shock weather events linked to climate change mean traditional techniques and practices are increasingly failing to deliver the yields producers might expect for their efforts. Farmers spend hours toiling to produce crops, only to watch the fruits of their labour wither in the fields or be decimated by pests, leaving them struggling to feed their families or meet household costs.
LoCAL-ACE builds on the successes of the ‘Boosting Green Employment and Enterprise Opportunities in Ghana’, also known as the GrEEn Project, which was funded by the European Union and closed in 2024. Both GrEEn and LoCAL-ACE use the UNCDF-designed LoCAL Facility to work with communities to identify and finance investments that strengthen local resilience to the impacts of climate change. In Ghana, 1.3 million men, women and children have directly benefitted from transformative projects including sustainable water infrastructure facilities, climate resilient bridges and improved agricultural techniques, among others.
Building better farming systems, one community at a time
In Ocansey’s village in the Greater Accra Region, residents worked with their local government to develop locally appropriate and climate smart agricultural techniques that build the communities’ economic base: smallholder farms. The farmers learned how to make fertilizers and pest repellents from locally available and natural ingredients. Farmers also trained in soil regeneration practices. This includes a process called mixed cropping, which involves planting two or more different crops in the same field simultaneously to improve biodiversity and the improve soil health.
“Communities are living with the impacts of climate change every day and are best placed, with the involvement of their local authorities, to identify the solutions they need to build their resilience and ability to adapt,” said Angela Yayra Kwashie, Technical Specialist at UNCDF. “What excites me personally, is that this is an investment in the future. Ada East District is a coastal area which is rich with its diverse ecology from plants, animals and birds. With investments such as these, we are enabling the community to protect and maintain that biodiversity for future generations while supporting climate-smart economic development.”
