An integrated landscape based strategy for guiding informal activities and settlement in the riparian landscape of Lake Volta, Ghana.

The impact of a dam extends further than the flooded landscape. Even now, dams are being built all over the world. This often has dramatic consequences for the community and can be grounds for conflict. It is important to regard dams from a spatial perspective. Lake Volta in Ghana in West Africa can serve as a case study. When the Akosombo Dam was constructed in 1964 some 85,000 square kilometres of land was inundated and 80,000 people were forced to leave their homes. Despite preventive planning measures, the riparian landscape of Lake Volta is these days host to informal activities and settlement on a large scale. The principal reason for setting up there is the huge potential for activities in the primary sector brought by the large body of water. The inhabitants who live from these themselves attract further informal activities and settlement. Yet the landscape is vulnerable in the extreme and the mounting pressure is causing the system to degrade. To compound matters, sedimentation brought by human activity is threatening the future production of hydro-electric power by the Akosombo Dam. The present uniform government policy is proving inadequate to the task.

This project assesses the possibility of creating within this complex relationship a spatial, sustainable and integrated solution whose strategy is rooted in the landscape.

Our intention is to find a balance between sustaining the quality of life in the informal settlements and protecting the surroundings against sedimentation and degradation. The concept steps off from the spatial structure of the riparian landscape, strengthening it with infrastructure to create a framework. At strategic places the link of infrastructure facilities to the network serves to guide the informal activities and settlements. The concept functions as a magnet with a positive and a negative pole. Access to basic needs and the opportunity to realize one's potential attracts concentrated development of private initiatives and settlement. This relieves pressure on the most vulnerable parts of the landscape. And, being at a greater distance from the lake, there is less risk of flooding for the settlers. This incentive planning approach uses limited financial resources and minimal land ownership. The design provides solutions to a number of basic problems such as poor accessibility and erratic and unreliable power supply, integrating them with such basic facilities as clean drinking water, sanitation, safe living conditions and attractive outdoor space. By improving water retention in the landscape agricultural production will increase and with it the guarantee of food. Improved agricultural techniques protect the environmental system from erosion, depletion and pollution.

Place of education: Wageningen Universiteit | Specialization: landscape architecture | Tutors: Ingrid Duchhart, Kelly Shannon