Local voices on conservation equity: Farmer perceptions in Ghana's incentive-based agroforestry program

Incentive-based conservation initiatives are continually promoted as instruments for restoring degraded forest landscapes, yet their legitimacy depends on the perceived fairness of procedural equity. Despite extensive studies on Ghana's Modified Taungya System, there remains limited empirical evidence on procedural equity from farmers' perspectives. This study explores farmers' perspectives on procedural equity and the actual benefits and burdens of Ghana's Modified Taungya System, a community-driven agroforestry program. Based on 30 semi-structured interviews and a deductive qualitative content analysis grounded in procedural equity theory, our findings indicate that farmers universally benefited from the production of short-term food crops. However, the promised long-term timber revenue remained largely unrealized, with only partial payments reported by a minority of farmers contributing to frustration and undermining the trust of farmers. Key procedural aspects, such as access to relevant information, leadership selection, and conflict resolution, were perceived as inequitable or unfair by farmers. In contrast, most farmers showed sufficient trust in the mechanisms available to ensure participants are held responsible for their actions. We conclude that institutionalizing measures to ensure formal and accessible communication, democratic election of leadership, and effective conflict resolution will not only strengthen procedural equity but also ensure the long-term legitimacy, effectiveness, and sustainability of the MTS in the Juaso Forest Districts. The study recommends a more inclusive governance structure that separates the leadership and mediation roles of the Taungya Heads and establishes neutral third-party mediators to ensure effective participation and clearer accountability mechanisms. It also recommends adopting proper orientation or onboarding, forming peer-learning platforms, and using low-cost digital platforms to reduce asymmetries and strengthen transparency and procedural equity. We encourage future research to examine how procedural equity influences long-term ecological outcome on across incentive-based contexts. • Farmers benefit from short-term food crops but face long-term revenue uncertainty. • Bureaucratic and administrative hurdles restrain farmers from receiving wide range of short-term benefits. • Undemocratic leadership selection undermines procedural equity and accountability. • Information gaps and weak grievance mechanisms erode trust in MTS implementation. • Knowledge asymmetries and overlap of leadership and mediation roles, risks elite capture.