J. Henry Owusu University of Connecticut, Storrs Since the early 1980s, most Sub-Saharan African countries have resorted to structural adjustment programs to reform their ailing economies. Adjustment, however, may provide a convenient means for governments of the adjusting economies and international capital to meet their current economic and political interests, usually by sacrificing the physical environment, with huge environmental costs for the adjusting country. This paper uses Ghana’s forestry sector, which has been characterized by a dramatic increase in wood exports since adjustment, to demonstrate a direct link between adjustment and environmental destruction. Ghana’s dramatic increase in wood exports, involving a rapid and extensive deforestation, results from the government’s need to meet its increasing external debt service obligations, and is exacerbated by the series of massive local currency devaluation required under adjustment “to get prices right.” The systematic reduction in government revenue from devaluation to amortize the increasing debts, keeps the government and indebted wood processing firms on a treadmill of export-based extraction/deforestation. Key Words: structural adjustment, debt, deforestation, environmental destruction, Ghana. Introduction S ince the early 1980s, most countries in Sub- Saharan Africa (SSA) have adopted and im- plemented Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) 1 in line with the push by the two fore- most international financial institutions—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank—for “accelerated” or “sustainable” development in that region (see World Bank 1981, 1989). Essentially, SAPs are a package of reforms designed to restore economic health in the ailing economies of the Third World. The package normally includes massive devaluation of the local currency to improve the competi- tiveness of exports, with the object of generating a trade surplus to meet the adjusting nation’s debt servicing obligations. Unlike most adjusting SSA countries, Ghana embraced and implemented the program. The subsequent economic changes were touted by the sponsors and the international financial community as a big success 2 —a claim that is widely disputed, particularly by critics of the IMF and the World Bank. Critics such as George (1988, 1992) and Hayter (1989), argue that SAPs cause inter alia, widespread environ- mental destruction, while simultaneously emp- tying the adjusting debtor countries of their natural resources. In addition, the program ren- ders adjusting countries less able to service their debt each year, and precludes investment in eco- nomic recovery (George 1992). Indeed, follow- ing the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future (WCED 1987), which emphasized the impor- tance of using resources to meet current needs without compromising the ability of future gen- erations to meet theirs, there has been increas- ing awareness of global environmental issues. In light of such awareness, a number of non- government organizations like the Environ- mental Defence Fund and Friends of the Earth have also shown that growth under adjustment, as promoted by the IMF and the World Bank, involves huge environmental costs. Focusing on Ghana’s forestry sector, a key component of the economy, this paper uses that country’s Economic Recovery Program (ERP) which began in 1983, to demonstrate that SAPs provide a convenient means for governments and their sponsors to meet mutual economic and political interests. These interests are usually met by sacrificing the physical environment through desperate actions such as overexploita- tion of natural resources so that the “current convenience” of meeting those interests gener- ates huge environmental costs for the adjusting country. This position is tied to two important perspectives on debt and Third World develop- ment, the first of which holds that a vital part of Current Convenience, Desperate Deforestation: Ghana’s Adjustment Program and the Forestry Sector* Professional Geographer, 50(4) 1998, pages 418–436 © Copyright 1998 by Association of American Geographers. Initial submission, January 1998; revised submission, March 1998; final acceptance May 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK. *I wish to thank William Berentsen and Joseph Oppong for their editorial comments, and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable sug- gestions on an earlier version of this paper.