Coastal communities in Ghana are on the front line of climate change. Rising sea levels, intensifying coastal erosion, unpredictable rainfall, and warming waters are already disrupting fishing seasons and threatening homes and farmland along the coast. Friends of the Nation (FoN) works with these communities to build economic resilience that can absorb these shocks rather than be undone by them.

What We Do

FoN helps coastal households and small businesses adapt their livelihoods to a changing climate. This includes promoting climate-smart approaches to fish processing and aquaculture, supporting savings and loans groups that help families withstand lean seasons, and encouraging diversification into climate-resilient alternative livelihoods such as beekeeping, vegetable farming, and small-scale trade. We also work with communities to understand local climate and coastal erosion risks, and to feed that understanding into district-level planning, so that adaptation measures reflect what communities are actually experiencing on the ground.

Why It Matters

Climate change does not affect all households equally. Families that depend entirely on fishing, with no savings or alternative income, are the most exposed when a bad season, a storm, or eroding shoreline strikes. By strengthening economic resilience today, FoN aims to help coastal communities absorb these pressures without being pushed deeper into poverty, and to ensure that the burden of climate adaptation does not fall hardest on those who contributed least to the problem.