As gold prices soar, Ghana faces ‘looming crisis’ over illegal mining | Environmental news

When activist Oliver Barker Vormawor saw reports in September that the Ghana Water Agency would be unable to supply water to parts of the country due to extreme contamination of major rivers from small-scale mining activities, 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 failure to act to stop the “looming environmental disaster.” They were determined to put the matter to a vote sooner hotly contested general election in December. But instead of getting a reaction to their demands, Vormawor and several of his comrades were arrested and imprisoned for weeks on charges of unlawful assembly.

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

“There is still no road map from Mahama on how to tackle the problem,” Vormawor, who once worked at the United Nations as a legal officer, told Al Jazeera. “It’s really hard to say that his government will be more aggressive about it because even as an opposition party, they have been very insecure and awkward about the issue,” he added, referring to Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Formerly called the “Gold Coast,” the West African nation is buckling under the pressure of widespread, unrelenting, small-scale mining of the shiny metal. Much of that artisanal activity falls under what the locals call “galamsey,” or altogether “collect them and sell them.” The term once referred to illegal mining, carried out mostly by untrained young men and women, but now more loosely encompasses licensed small-scale operations that mine unsustainably.

Officials are allegedly involved in the galamsey

Galamsey has been in practice for many years, but gold prices rising globally to an all-time high (close to $3,000 per gram) at the end of 2024 have caused a corresponding increase in illegal mining across Ghana, and in fact, more intense destruction of water bodies.

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

By 2017, more than 60 percent of the nation’s water bodies were already contaminated with mercury and other heavy metals, turning once-clear rivers a murky brown, according to the state’s Water Resources Commission. 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 growing area to mining. Some farmers claim that galamsey operators are buying up their land or intimidating them into selling.

“This is a problem that has been going on for decades, but it is a problem that is rapidly escalating and it has created a sense among Ghanaians that we are running out of time to protect our country and our people,” Ewurabena Yanyi-Akofur, country director of the NGO WaterAid, told Al Jazeer.

“While illegal gold mining took place 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 other health crises,” she added.

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

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

Many activists at the time condemned the law and drew attention to the fact that the country lost the equivalent of 30,000 football pitches to deforestation for logging, agriculture and illegal mining of gold and other minerals such as bauxite that year.

However, the government continued to pass legislation and continued to grant mining permits – for exploration, industrial operations and small-scale mining, at an unprecedented rate. While officials issued an estimated 90 permits between 1988 and early 2017, at least another 2,000 were issued between September 2017 and January 2025. data from the Ghana Mining Repository. That period falls under Akufo-Addo’s mandate. Most of the permits were for small-scale mines, and key reserves such as the Nkrabia Forest Reserve, west of Accra, and the Boin Tano Reserve, located in the country’s western region, were among those awarded.

Anger against the Akufo-Addo government intensified after it emerged that some of the companies recently licensed under LI 2462 belonged to high-ranking politicians and members of Akufo-Addo’s NNP party, and that some of these people also operated illegal mines.

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

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

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 25, 2024

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

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

The Akufo-Addo government denied the allegations made in the Frimpong-Boateng report and said it was a catalog of “personal grievances” without evidence. In October 2024, the administration deployed the military across the country’s water bodies to crack down on illegal miners under a special “Operation Stop”.

A new president, but little hope

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

President Mahama, who was to swear for the second time in office on January 7, he promised to “reset” Ghana and tackle illegal mining.

In an interview with Voice of America days after his landslide election victory in December, Mahama said his government would make it a priority to pass legislation banning mining in forest reserves and areas near water bodies. He also promised that his administration would work with the state’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up polluted rivers from sewage and heavy metals.

However, the president did not promise to cancel the recently approved licenses for small traffic or suspend new concessions, stressing that this ensures livelihoods.

“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 not … train our people to mine in an environmentally safe way? We are ready to consider those things.”

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

However, some have accused Mahama’s administration of failing to check the influx of Chinese nationals who have been pouring into Ghana to invest in small-scale mining equipment such as earth diggers and working alongside local Ghanaians. In 2013, the Ghana Immigration Service deported more than 4,500 Chinese nationals following raids on illegal mines. Now most of the illegal mining is done by Ghanaians.

Activist Vormawor said he does not expect much from Mahama’s government because of his administration’s “weak action” in his first term as president. 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 is not done yet because a crisis is looming and we have to draw a line between people who have the means to live and the destruction of the environment.”