Biofuel crop production and large scale land acquisition in Ghana: Implications for land-use planning

Growing concerns of meeting the energy demands and parallel pursue of sustainable development in Ghana have shifted attention to renewable energy sources including biofuel. Land-based investments are therefore increasingly becoming attractive in Ghana and, over the years, many foreign direct investments have acquired large parcels of land for biofuel crop production. However, the current system of planning in Ghana is not ready to the remits of sustainable development from energy perspective and landscape approach evidenced by the lack of policy and institutional arrangement. This paper sought to explore the implications of biofuel crop production on land-use planning through a review of selected case studies. It was found that the land reforms and decentralized planning system are weak in addressing emerging trends of large scale land acquisition at the local level. The institutional framework for land-use planning has less provision for integrated energy planning and the current land-use practice favours only the urban areas. It is therefore imperative to revise the guidelines for large scale land acquisition to allow for decentralized energy planning, adoption of integrated energy-land use planning and scaling-up the preparations of rural land use planning.