Decolonising climate change policies and governance strategies in Ghana

Ghana's climate change policies and governance strategies have proven inadequate. This is because successive Ghanaian governments have uncritically adopted international climate policies and conventions, apparently with little regard for Africa's colonial history, Ghanaian realities and context. International institutions actively enable climate coloniality, often crafting climate change policies relying disproportionately on Western and Western-influenced epistemic resources while safeguarding hegemonic interests. This article articulates and critiques various climate change policies and governance strategies of the Government of Ghana, with a view to presenting a decolonial alternative approach. It establishes the crucial connection between environmental ethics and climate change governance while engaging with diverse environmental thought and discourses on decolonising climate change policies in Africa and beyond. The article juxtaposes Western-oriented strategies with African traditions of environmental conceptualisation and stewardship – including Ubuntu ethics and communal resource governance – to make the case for decolonising approaches to climate action in Ghana. We contend that genuine climate resilience in Ghana/Africa must look beyond (Western-oriented) technocratic reforms to pursue political and epistemic shifts that embed indigenous knowledge systems, strengthen ancestral communal resource governance, invest in domestic financing, and foster South–South cooperation, thereby making its climate action more just and effective.