A controversial government decision to grant permits for gold mining in Ghana’s dwindling forest reserves threatens the survival of the forest and of the people who depend on the forest to meet their basic needs. Two Greengrants grantees are on the front lines of this battle: Wassa Association of Communities Against Mining (WACAM) and the Center for Public Interest Law (CEPIL). WACAM is an alliance of rural villagers who have been suffering the effects of gold mining for more than a hundred years. The Center for Public Interest Law (CEPIL) focuses on using the Ghanaian legal system to protect people in mining areas and improve public oversight of mining operations. Both organizations are a part of the National Coalition of Civil Society Groups Against Mining in Ghana’s Forest Reserves. This coalition of 13 civil society organizations is campaigning to keep gold mining out of Ghana’s remaining forest reserves.
Only 12 percent of Ghana’s once plentiful rain forests and savanna woodlands remain, and much of this remaining forest is nominally protected in forest reserves. The reserves threatened by mining are home to more than 50 endangered species of plants, mammals, butterflies and birds. Additionally, between 10,000 and 12,000 people look to the forests for their food and livelihood, and millions of people in both urban and rural areas depend on the rivers than run through the reserves for clean drinking water.
The government of Ghana has its reasons for supporting increased mining and increased foreign investment in Ghana. The government highlights the contributions that mining makes to the Ghana economy – the mining companies plan to invest $2 billion in order to extract the gold in the forest reserves. With just one of the five mining corporation promising to invest $500 million to create 1,000 jobs immediately – even before mining begins – the government sees this to be a quick and easy way to foster economic development. Minister of Mines, Kwadwo Adjei Darko, also points out that after the mining companies were granted prospecting permits by the previous administration, they invested millions of dollars in exploration. Denying these companies the right to exploit the commercially viable gold deposits they found would render the companies’ substantial investment worthless and could send a message to other investors that Ghana is not a safe environment for foreign direct investment.
Another argument in favor of issuing the environmental permits is that the permits ensure government involvement in the mining process. The permits allow the government to require that corporations engage in environmental planning and set aside money for ecological restoration in mining areas. The government can also make sure that companies invest in surrounding communities, including funding projects for alternative livelihoods. According to Adjei Darko, if permits were not granted to corporations, illegal miners would rush into unexploited areas. Since illegal mining operations are usually small and difficult to monitor, they would be more likely to harm the forest reserves.
The National Coalition of Civil Society Groups Against Mining in Ghana’s Forest Reserves has raised a variety of concerns about the proposed mining projects. First of all, the group questions the assumption that more mining is good for the Ghanaian economy. Mining companies have been active in several areas of the country for many years, but the people in those areas have not enjoyed a marked increase in their standard of living. Research has found that mining is unlikely to reduce rural poverty because it generates little local employment. Because gold extraction in Ghana is done largely through surface mines that are capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive, gold mining accounts for only two percent of employment nationwide. Furthermore, the incentive structure built into Ghana’s mining laws allows foreign companies to take up to 95 percent of mining profits out of the country, and the laws do not require that these corporations pay income taxes or other duties. Since the minerals are exported as raw materials and processed elsewhere, the mining industry does not establish strong links to other sectors of the economy and does not generate any value-added benefits to the national economy.
As the contribution of gold mining to the economy is so small, many local citizens groups believe that these benefits do not outweigh the costs of extending mining into forest reserves. Mining creates a number of environmental problems. In addition to the deforestation required to make way for mining facilities and to create roads to allow vehicles to service those facilities, water and air pollution are also major concerns. A 1996 spill at a gold mine in Teberebie released 36 million liters of cyanide solution into a tributary of the Bonsa River and destroyed cacao crops and fishponds. In 2001, a tailings dam burst at the Tarkwa mine and released several thousand cubic meters of mine wastewater containing cyanide and heavy metals into the Asuman River, killing large quantities of fish and contaminating the drinking water of thousands of people. Moreover, dust from mining operations is high in silica, which can penetrate lung tissue and cause severe respiratory disorders, such as tuberculosis. One mining region’s tuberculosis incidence is more than 15 times the national average, and air monitors six kilometers away from current mining operations have registered particulate matter in the air at levels exceeding those recommended by both the Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization.
In addition to environmental problems like deforestation, biodiversity loss and toxic pollution, the Coalition is concerned about human rights violations committed by mining companies and local governments and the displacement of people living near gold deposits. The Coalition also questions the legality of allowing gold mining in officially designated national forest reserves without changing their protected status, and the group is troubled by the possibility that opening the reserves to mining is in violation of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which Ghana ratified in 1994.
Global Greengrants Fund grantees have contributed to the effort to oppose more mining in Ghana. A grant supported efforts by WACAM to educate rural forest-dwellers about the threats created by mining. Of great concern to citizens groups is the pattern of abuse they see emerging in mining communities. Several hundred people who resisted relocation to make way for mining concessions have been faced with the destruction of their village by mining company bulldozers, and community members have been refused access to education, clean water and access to their fields and crops. A fact-finding mission by Ghana’s Human Rights and Administrative Justice Committee confirmed reports of arbitrary arrests, denial of access to food, forced evictions, insufficient compensation and demolition of villages. WACAM has become involved in this struggle to stop human rights abuses. The group reported that two vocal opponents of mining in forest reserves have lodged complaints that mining company officials and local leaders have publicly humiliated them, made threatening phone calls, and arrested and detained them without cause. WACAM also has issued a report detailing specific cases of human rights abuses by mining company employees.
CEPIL, also a Greengrants grantee, is investigating many of these human rights violations related to mining and is representing victims in civil court. CEPIL is addressing mining concerns from a different angle as well – a grant from Greengrants made it possible for the organization to thoroughly examine the role of the World Bank in promoting mining in Ghana. CEPIL has become one of the many civil society organizations in Ghana and elsewhere that are speaking out against mining and the Bank’s support of extractive industries. At a consultation workshop organized by the Bank’s Extractive Industry Review, these groups asserted that the World Bank’s support of extractive industries in Africa has resulted in large profits for foreign investors, little tax revenue for states, increased debt burdens for African countries and a reduced quality of life for people living in areas rich in minerals. The groups also connected Bank involvement in resource extraction to intensified colonial patterns of exploitation, environmental degradation, human rights abuses, and a relationship of domination and dependence between African countries and donor countries. CEPIL has called for an extensive independent study of the Ghanaian communities surrounding gold mines that the World Bank Group helped create. The organization is demanding an examination of the health of local populations, scientific testing of water quality in the area, and an examination of the relationship between toxins used and released in mining and the incidence of disease in local communities.
Other Greengrants grantees have participated in the campaign against mining in Ghana’s forest reserves. The League of Environmental Journalists is raising public awareness about the environmental and social consequences of mining. A grant from Greengrants funded a one-day workshop in April 2004 to educate journalists about mining in Ghana and its negative effects on people and the environment. Guards of the Earth and the Vulnerable, located in the forested Brong Ahafo region of Ghana, used a grant from Greengrants to obtain space for meetings and transport people to remote areas to conduct education and outreach activities.
In March of 2004, The National Coalition of Civil Society Groups Against Mining in Ghana’s Forest Reserves demanded that the government not grant environmental permits for mining in the nation’s forest reserves and rescind previous licensing agreements. The organization also has asked the government to introduce more transparency to government decisions regarding mining and to respond officially to its concerns about mining in forest reserves, which the government, despite being aware of the group’s objections, has neglected to do. However, as Abdulai Darimani of Third World Network-Africa is careful to point out, while environmentalists and social activists have concerns about the low net returns of mining, environmental destruction, and human rights violations, few nongovernmental organizations are arguing for a categorical ban on mining in Ghana.