Abstract
This paper explains progress made toward integrating and sustaining a collaborative approach in the management of the high forest ecosystem in Ghana as well as examining the opportunity this approach provides to support forest-based rural communities' socioeconomic development. The reserved and unreserved high forests show high degradation and deforestation, as a result of forest policy prior to 1994, inoperative forest laws and regulations, and the decline and recovery of the high forest economy, which severely impacted both the forest condition and rural communities' social and economic welfare. Thus the objectives and strategies of Ghana's integrated and adaptive collaborative forest management approach are to ensure sustainable management through conservation, production, use, and restocking of the high forest as well as provide an opportunity and incentives to promote forest-based rural community socioeconomic development.
