Paper short abstract:

How do farming and customary land rules relate when horizons become hydro? In this paper, I explore how human, environmental and spiritual hydro-relations with the Volta waterways interact with private aquaculture in Ghana. How do wet and dry environmental management saturate and inform each other?

Paper long abstract:

How do farming and customary land rules relate when horizons become hydro? In this paper, I explore how human, environmental and spiritual hydro-relations interact with, include or become excluded from portions of Ghana's Volta River and Lake as contained and controlled for private aquaculture. In particular, I will consider how people in Akwamufie - historically known to farm land and trade - make sense of fish farming that individualises parts of the Volta and challenges their customs of control. In efforts to emulate the economic success of corporations via aqua-culture in a changing climate, residents of Akwamufie navigate political and physical currents as national regulation and the operation of two hydro-electric dams effect the water's conditions. In this paper, I ask how do wet and dry ways of environmental management saturate and inform each other when farming practices extend into Ghana's waterscape? And what changes in this process?