Eric Kumeh Mensah

Eric Kumeh Mensah is a postdoctoral researcher interested in power and equity at the intersection of natural resource governance and policy ecology.

He is a Ghanaian national, who has obtained a BSc in agroforestry and an MSc in natural resource governance from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Eric holds a doctorate from the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, which examined agriculture and forest conservation conflicts in Ghana.

As a former development worker, Eric has won and implemented several projects, including some funded by the FAO, the EU, the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs (DGIS) and the Norwegian Development Agency (NORAD).

Eric was a DAAD scholar during his PhD candidacy and has published several works in natural resource governance and agroforestry. Eric uses predominantly qualitative approaches, including in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, to understand power dynamics in socio-ecological systems, including how socio-environment policies and related investments affect diverse stakeholders, and best-bet, best-fit institutional arrangements that produce equitable outcomes. He is passionate about land access as a source of and a basis for tackling inequality in rural Africa.

Before joining the School of Geography and the Environment, Eric worked in Finland as a research scientist with the Natural Resources Institute Finland, focusing on how the European Union's policy and investments in bioeconomy projects affect land accumulation and community rights in fragile landscapes of Ghana. He also used to work as a development practitioner on forest landscape restoration, agricultural, and mining land use conflicts, with Tropenbos International Ghana.

PUBLICATIONS:

* Kumeh, E.M. and Ramcilovic-Suominen, S. (2023) Is the EU shirking responsibility for its deforestation footprint in tropical countries? Power, material, and epistemic inequalities in the EU's global environmental governance. Sustainability Science.

* Kumeh, E.M., Kyereh, B., Asante, J., Ohene-Gyan, G., Fummey-Nassah, V., Asare, A., Bosu, P.P. and Nketiah, S.K. (2023) Retooling incentive mechanisms to improve small-scale tree growers' contributions to global landscape restoration. Development in Practice.

* Kumeh, E.M., Bieling, C. and Birner, R. (2022) Food-security corridors: A crucial but missing link in tackling deforestation in Southwestern Ghana. Land Use Policy, 2021: 105862.

* Asumang-Yeboah, D., Kumeh, E.M., Brobbey, L.K. (2022) Community forest monitoring and the social reproduction of inequalities in Ghana. Geoforum, 134: 86-95.

* McDermott, C.L., Vira, B., Walcott, J., Brockhaus, M., Harris, M., Kumeh, E.M. and Gueiros, C. (2022) The Evolving Governance of REDD+. Chapter 2 in, Parrotta, J., Mansourian, S., Wildburger, C. and Grima, N. (eds.) Forests, Climate, Biodiversity and People: Assessing a Decade of REDD+. International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO).

* Kumeh, E.M., Kyereh, B., Birkenberg, A. and Birner, R. (2021) Customary power, farmer strategies and the dynamics of access to protected forestlands for farming: Implications for Ghana's forest bioeconomy. Forest Policy and Economics.

* Omulo, G. and Kumeh E. M. (2020) Farmer-to-farmer digital network as a strategy to strengthen agricultural performance in Kenya: A research note on 'Wefarm' platform. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 158: 120120.

* Kumeh, E.M., Damnyag, L. and Nketiah, S.K. (2020) Analysis of charcoal production with recent developments in Sub-Sahara Africa: A review. African Geographical Review, 00(00), 1-21.

* Kumeh, E.M. and Omulo, G. (2019) Youth's access to agricultural land in Sub-Saharan Africa: A missing link in the global land grabbing discourse. Land Use Policy, 89: 104210.

* Kumeh, E.M., Kyereh, B., Oduro, K.A., Brobbey, L.K. and Nketiah, S.K (2019) Transparency in the governance of landscape restoration finance: A case study of Ghana's Forest Plantation Development Fund. Scientific African, 6: e00185.

* Kumeh, E.M. and Abu, D.K. (2019) A reality check: unveiling the unseen faces of SRA compliance in Ghana. International Forestry Review, 21(4): 446-459.