There is evidence that stakeholders' willingness and motivations to support sustainable river management strategies plays a crucial role in the success of water management policies. Earlier works have highlighted some of the drivers of stakeholders' willingness, however, the generalizability of much published research on this issue is problematic given that much of the research focuses on the Global North. By conducting in‐depth interviews and applying content analysis, this paper aimed at exploring stakeholders' willingness and motivations to support sustainable water resource management as well as what stakeholders would do to support sustainable management of water resources. Results show that stakeholders appear to be willing to support water protection measures due to a wide range of motivations. Therefore, policymakers may need to emphasize those motivations when encouraging the public and/or segments of the society to engage in sustainable water resource management practices.

Recent environmental policies introduced to safeguard the quality of water resources have focussed on encouraging pro-environmental behaviours (PEB). This has resulted in a considerable volume of research output that seeks to investigate the determinants of PEB in the context of water resources management. However, there is a paucity of literature exploring the topic within the developing country context, though evidence suggests that these regions record the highest rates of water resource pollution. This limits our understanding of the determinants of PEB and thus constrains our ability to develop and implement effective policies to encourage uptake of PEB. Following this, we apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour to explore the determinants of PEB, using structural equation modelling to analyse survey data from rural Ghana. The evidence supports the hypothesis that attitudes and perceived behavioural control affects intentions, and this translates into pro-environmental behaviour. Results further indicate that attitude and perceived behavioural control have a strong explanatory power in people’s intentions, and intentions are influential drivers of pro-environmental behaviour. An explicit recognition of the role of situational factors could offer a profound understanding of the determinants of behaviours that promote water resources management and support the development and implementation of policies aimed at safeguarding the quality of water resources.

Deforestation is a major environmental problem confronting countries in the Global South. In response to the high rate of deforestation, policymakers have over the years implemented a myriad of afforestation programmes. This study sought to assess the prospects and challenges of Ghana’s Youth in Afforestation Programme. The data used for this study was collected from 60 recruits of the afforestation programme. The researchers also relied on institutional interviews and documents from relevant agencies. Overall, the results showed that the Youth in Afforestation Programme has enormous potentials in restoring Ghana’s degraded forests and protecting existing ones. However, it is confronted with several challenges ranging from financial, logistical to political. The inability of the implementing agencies and other relevant stakeholders to address these challenges has reduced the programme to a mere rhetoric rather than serving as a tool for transforming the socio-economic and environmental frontiers of the Ghanaian society.

Despite increasing evidence that understanding and integrating local people’s perceptions of water quality and governance helps improve water governance processes, only a limited volume of research addresses this topic in developing countries. Therefore, using in-depth interviews and content analysis, the goal of this paper is to explore stakeholders’ perceptions of the quality and governance of water resources in Wenchi, Ghana. Results show that stakeholders perceive river water quality to be deteriorating. Stakeholders’ judgement of river quality is influenced by water use value, pollution sources, organoleptic properties and sanitary conditions of the riverbank. Stakeholders highlighted key areas that require authorities’ efforts: formulation and enforcement of by-laws, awareness raising, provision of financial, logistic and technical support, conducting research and community mobilisation. These findings need to be carefully reviewed and systematically integrated into expert views to advance our understanding of the problem, how best to address it and who to target during interventions.