Sacred groves for enhanced climate mitigation: Towards a framework for managing unintended externalities of environmental systems

Arguments based on the ‘land crunch’ phenomenon and its projection to further intensify in the future, thus exacerbating land use demands for food production has prompted calls and at the same time concerns on converting sacred groves (SG) for croplands or plantations. To establish the full benefits of SG beyond its primary intent of providing a religious and cultural heritage-based protected forest, we examined the potential co-benefits of SG. Consequently, the aboveground biomass (AGB), belowground biomass (BGB), amount of carbon, soil physiochemical properties in three land-use systems were empirically measured. Plantation and Cropland with scattered trees (CLST) were used as controls to the SG. The land use systems examined were from three communities in the Guinea Savanna zone of Ghana. The plot technique was used for the vegetation sampling. From the results, it was established that SG recorded the highest AGB, BGB and carbon stock with 620.6 Mg/ha, 161.4 Mg/ha and 391.0 MgC/ha respectively while the carbon stock for CLST was 341.7 MgC/ha and 124.8 MgC/ha for plantation. Similarly, SG had the highest soil carbon stock (81.5 tC/ha), compared to 66.1 tC/ha for plantation and 44.4 tC/ha for CLST. Finally, the paper then presents a decision-outcome framework, highlighting the dual pathways of intended and unintended environmental externalities for the establishment of SG. The paper demonstrates and suggests that the SG do not just deliver religious-based and socio-cultural-based (intended consequence), but they also generate co-benefits outcomes (unintended benefits) through its provision of eco-system services and helping in enhancing climate change mitigation.