1.0 Background
The Adaptation Learning Programme (ALP) for Africa has been implemented in Northern Ghana since 2010 with the prime aim of building the adaptive capacity of the vulnerable populace to adjust the negative impact of climate change variability and change. Several strategic interventions has therefore been rolled out in a quest to achieve this aim. To this, one of ALP approaches is to build the organisational capacity of institutions, CSOs, and Community level organisations in dealing with the impact of climate change. In the Nadowli-kaleo District of the Upper West region, ALP supported the establishment of the Climate Change Science Policy Platform (CCSPP). The CCSPP is mandated to replicate and upscale the CBA approaches in the District. The CCSPP therefore identified Bushfires at the community as a threat to climate change adaptation and came up with a bottom-up approach to tackling bushfires. Bushfires occur widely and are very pervasive and extensive in the Nadowli-Kaleo District. It affects the composition and density if vegetation, frustrates the efforts at sustainable development, and threatens the future survival of the people by contributing immensely to desertification and general environmental degradation. According to the CCSPP, the efforts to fight bushfires at the community level cannot achieve through external actors but through community level and community motivated efforts. They therefore came out with a comprehensive plan of activities with the Support of ALP and the ALP team to tackle bushfires at the community through traditional leaders and community members support. To this end, two engagement meetings were held with chiefs and elders from the Kaleo and Nadowli Traditional Councils. To purpose of these meetings was to get the support of the chiefs in the fight against bush fires and also to build consensus and provide that avenue to deliberate the appropriate ways of tackling bushfires in their respective communities.
