As gold prices rise, Ghana faces ‘imminent crisis’ over illegal mining | News Environment

When activist Oliver Barker Vormawor saw reports in September that Ghana’s water agency could not supply parts of the country with water due to extreme pollution of major rivers from mining activities on a small scale, he knew he had to do something.

Later that month, Vormawor and dozens of other concerned Ghanaians took to the streets in the capital, Accra, to protest what they said was President Nana Akufo-Addo’s inaction to stop an “imminent environmental catastrophe”. They were determined to put the matter to the vote before the the highly contested December general election. But rather than having a reaction to their demands, Vormawor and several of his comrades were arrested and imprisoned for weeks on charges of illegal assembly.

Now, even though Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) has been voted out, activists like Vormawor say they have little confidence in the new president, John Mahama, and his ability to contain the increasing pollution of the rivers. and of the land of Ghana.

“There is still no roadmap from Mahama on how to tackle the problem,” Vormawor, who once served at the UN as a legal officer, told Al Jazeera. “It is really difficult to say that his government will be more aggressive on this because even as the opposition party, they were very tentative and uncomfortable to take up the problem,” he added, referring to the National Democratic Congress of Mahama (NDC).

Formerly known as the “Gold Coast,” the West African nation is buckling under pressure from widespread and relentless mining of the shiny metal. Most of that craft activity is under what the locals call “galamsey”, or in full “collect and sell”. The term once referred to illegal mining, carried out by untrained young men and women, but now more loosely includes small-scale licensed operations that mine unsustainably.

The officers are allegedly complicit in galamsey

Galamsey has been in practice for several years, but gold prices that have increased worldwide to an all-time high (close to $3,000 per gram) by the end of 2024 have caused a corresponding increase in illegal mining in Ghana, and in effect, more intense devastation of water bodies.

Small-scale miners use a lot of water by digging up the soil around river beds in forested areas and washing it to reveal the gold ore. They use toxic chemicals like mercury and cyanide to separate the gold from the ore, and those chemicals flow into the rivers that hundreds of communities depend on for drinking and domestic use. Some say they earn about $70 to $100 a day.

As of 2017, more than 60 percent of the country’s water bodies were already contaminated with mercury and other heavy metals, turning once-clear rivers a dark brown, according to the U.S. Water Resources Commission. country The chemicals, which can damage the lungs, affect thousands of hectares of agricultural land. The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) said it has lost 2 percent of its total cocoa cultivation area to mining. Some farmers claim that galamsey operators buy their land or intimidate them into selling it.

“This is a problem that has been going on for decades, but it is a problem that is growing fast and this has created a sense among Ghanaians that we have run out of time to protect our country and our people”, Ewurabena Yanyi-Akofur, The director of the country’s non-governmental organization WaterAid, told Al Jazeera.

“While illegal gold mining used to occur mainly in the south of the country, our research shows that it is now endemic in the north. The presence of mercury and other toxins in the water leads to skin diseases and to other health crises,” he added.

In 2024 reportWaterAid has warned that Ghana could have to import water by 2030 in a business-as-usual scenario as drinking water sources dwindle.

Activists are particularly angry with LI 2462, an Akufo-Addo-era law that was passed in November 2022, which allowed mining concessions to be awarded in the country’s biodiversity hotspots, including protected forests. A previous policy limited mining in forests and protected reserves to about 2 percent of their total area.

Many activists at the time denounced the law and called attention to the fact that the country had lost the equivalent of 30,000 football fields to deforestation for farming, agriculture and illegal gold mining and other minerals such as bauxite that year.

However, the government moved forward with the law and proceeded to approve mining licenses – for exploration, industrial operations and small-scale mining, at an unprecedented rate. Where officials gave an estimated 90 licenses between 1988 and early 2017, at least 2,000 more were given between September 2017 and January 2025, according to the data from the Ghana Mining Repository. That period is under the tenure of Akufo-Addo. Most of the licenses were for small-scale mining, and key reserves such as the Nkrabia Forest Reserve, west of Accra, and the Boin Tano Reserve, located in the Western Region of the country, were among those assigned.

Anger against the Akufo-Addo government is intensifying after it surfaced that some of the companies recently licensed under LI 2462 belong to high-ranking politicians and members of Akufo-Addo’s NNP party and that some of these people also run illegal mines.

People in Ghana are protesting illegal gold mining, which has poisoned more than 60% of the country’s water bodies.

If illegal mining continues at the current rate, experts say that the entire country may be importing water by 2030. pic.twitter.com/EOIQB7Oh3w

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 25, 2024

In April 2023, an explosive report from the former Minister of the Environment Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng to Akufo-Addo leaked to the public. In it, Frimpong-Boateng accused “many party officials … his friends, personal assistants, agents, relatives” of participating in illegal mining. He accused, among others, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, an influential businessman and relative of Akufo-Addo, of interfering in the arrest of mining companies that destroyed forests.

“It was an open secret that they were using this as a way to raise money for the party, that the officials would get their own corners,” Vormawor, the activist, told Al Jazeera. Activists like him say the proliferation of small-scale mining has attracted more illegal mines as the government has failed to set standards and ensure oversight.

The Akufo-Addo government denied the allegations in the Frimpong-Boateng report and said it was a catalog of “personal grievances” without evidence. In October 2024, the administration deployed the military in water bodies in the country to flush out illegal miners under a special “Operation Halt”.

New president, but little hope

However, the results of galamsey are glaring. On January 2, Ghana’s water agency closed a water treatment plant again, this time in the western region of Tarkwa-Nsuaem, due to severe pollution of the Bonsa River, which supplies drinking water for more than 200,000 people in the area. It was the second time in five months the authorities were forced to cut the offer.

President Mahama, who was sworn for a second term in office on January 7, he promised to “reset” Ghana and deal with illegal mining.

In an interview with Voice of America days after his big victory in the December elections, Mahama said that his government will prioritize passing a law to ban mining in forest reserves and in areas near the bodies of d water He also promised that his administration would work with the country’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up rivers polluted with effluents and heavy metals.

However, the president did not promise to cancel the small-scale licenses recently approved, or to put a hold on the new concessions, noting that they provide a means of subsistence.

“People need to distinguish between small-scale mining and illegal mining: small-scale mining is legal,” the president said. “There are ways to do it without destroying the environment in Canada, Australia and the United States. The technology exists. So why don’t we … train our people to do mining in an environmentally safe way? We are willing to consider these things.”

Mahama first led the government for four years between 2012 and 2016. At that time, galamsey was already a problem, although his administration is credited for banning mining in forest reserves.

However, some accused the Mahama administration of failing to control the influx of Chinese nationals pouring into Ghana to invest in small-scale mining equipment such as earth diggers and working alongside Ghanaian locals. In 2013, Ghana’s immigration service deported more than 4,500 Chinese nationals after raids on illegal mines. Now, much of the illegal mining is done by Ghanaians.

Activist Vormawor said he does not expect much from the Mahama government because of his administration’s “weak action” in its first presidency. The president, he said, should repeal the controversial Akufo-Addo law and several licenses and declare a state of emergency. Without these measures, Vormawor said, he will not stop protesting.

“Yes, there is small-scale mining and there is illegal mining, but most of it is simply irresponsible mining,” the activist said. “The work does not end yet because there is an impending crisis, and we must draw a line between people who have a livelihood and harm the environment.”