Participation without power: community-based organisations and the limits of collaborative forest governance in Ghana's Offinso Forest District

Purpose Community-based organisations (CBOs) are widely promoted as the institutional link between state forestry agencies and forest-fringe communities in sub-Saharan Africa, yet evidence on whether this arrangement transfers genuine authority to communities, rather than simply relabelling their exclusion, remains limited. This paper examines how forest-fringe households in Ghana's Offinso Forest District evaluate the governance role of CBOs and asks whether that evaluation is grounded in functioning participatory mechanisms or in something else. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on a structured household survey of 300 respondents across four forest-fringe communities (Abofour, Derma, Asempaneye and Akumadan), analysed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests of association, independent-samples t-tests and multiple linear regression. Findings Respondents endorse CBOs' governance role almost unanimously, yet the mechanisms that would make that role substantive-joint planning, training, incentives and transparent decision-making are reported as absent or minimal by the same respondents. A regression model explaining 47% of the variance in governance evaluations shows that perceived institutional barriers are the strongest positive predictor of positive CBO evaluation, while satisfaction with consultation mechanisms is a significant negative predictor, net of demographic controls. Community members, in other words, value CBOs most where they are most aware of the gap between formal inclusion and actual authority. Illegal logging, weakened monitoring and eroded community–state trust are the most widely reported consequences of this gap. Research limitations/implications Strengthening CBOs as monitors and mobilisers of labour, without also transferring planning authority, secure tenure and predictable benefit-sharing, is likely to reproduce rather than resolve the participation deficit this paper documents. Originality/value The paper contributes district-level, statistically grounded evidence on a governance pattern, endorsement without empowerment, that recent Ghanaian and continental scholarship has documented mainly through qualitative and institutional case studies. It shows how survey data can distinguish communities' appreciation of an institution from their assessment of the processes meant to sustain it, and it links that distinction to live Ghanaian reform windows, CREMA legal recognition under the 2024 Wildlife Resources Management Act, Social Responsibility Agreement enforcement and GCFRP benefit-sharing, rather than to generic calls for greater community authority.