Ghana’s ‘gold ores’ have given rise to social problems of a certain calibre in the last two decades.

Contentious issues such as farm land shortages and the destruction of welfare services such as hospitals so as to secure mining fields has led to alienated relations between mining communities and mining firms. Ghana was formerly known as the Gold Coast -thanks to its many gold mines and with new ones discovered every year. Gold mining is proving a hindrance to the growing need to preserve the natural environment and maintain a balanced eco-system.

Culturally, gold is very symbolic in our society and has been used for carvings and many forms of artistic expressions, notably in the Ashanti region. Local kings and/or chiefs and their families are usually adorned with trinkets and jewellery made of pure gold. So significant is gold that it is used in designating status among the people of the various chiefdoms and kingdoms that strive today in Ghana.

Intensive gold mining began in the late 1980s, when in a bid to save the stagnant economy, the Ghanaian government decided to open its doors to foreign corporations. It hoped to increase the country’s foreign investors and thereby re-boost the economy and increase employment prospects for its population. The country is now the second largest producer of gold in Africa. Multi-nationals and small-scale gold miners are the forces behind the mining industry. The main mining corporations are the American Newmont Mining Corporation, Gold Fields, Anglo Gold Ashanti, and the Canadian-owned Bogosu Gold Limited (BGL). The two major mines are located at Kenyase in the Ashanti region- operated by the Newmont group- and the other at Bogosu, in the Western region.

As profitable as gold mining can be, it only constitutes five per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), World Bank figures show. Spills of poisonous cyanide chemicals, used in the gold-leeching process, have already caused some neighbouring communities to move away from mines. In 2001, there was a spill which affected important rivers in the Abekoase area, Tarkwa. Another spill reported from the same mining company – Goldfields Ltd- occurred in 2003. Not up to three years later, another happened in Dumasi and its surrounding villages, in the Western region of Ghana from Bogosu Gold Ltd. This was the second time in two years that there was a spill into the Ajoo stream, an important source of water for the surrounding communities.

In an article published by Ghanaian NGO WACAM (Wassa Association for Communities Affected by Mining), the people of Badukrom, Kronko and Attakrom had to relocate and leave their livelihood of farming, following a cyanide spillage by AngloGold Ashanti in 1998. WACAM further stated that living in other communities had led these people to be branded as ‘refugees’. The article titled ‘The Need for Binding Standards to Regulate Surface Mining in Ghana’ said: “Nobody is listening to the grievances of such communities and there are no binding standards to either prevent the actions of the company or compel the company to compensate the poor people for the impacts”.

In The Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety Journal of July 2000 (Vol. 46:3), cyanide was presented as not sustainable with severe consequences on ecosystems and humans. Earlier in 2000, the UN equally had a report outlining the risks involved with cyanide spills following the disasters in Hungary and Romania in the same year.

The loss of farming (arable) land has presented a major problem particularly for people living in the rural areas. The Ghanaian Ministry of Mines and Energy say that 30 per cent of land in Ghana is used for mining.

Many farmers have lost hectares and hectares of arable plots to these firms, which are cleared-off to establish gold mines. At least 60 per cent of the Ghanaian labour force is employed on farms according to the country’s Ministry of Agriculture. Worth mentioning is the fact that 40 per cent of Ghana’s annual income is represented by agriculture, as measured by the global domestic product (GDP).

In addition, current mining practices could lead to an already volatile situation of food shortages. The recent surge in the Ghanaian population means more mouths to feed and with the number of farmers and farming land dropping, the country could face a shortage in food supply leading to increase in prices of staple foods. This situation will inevitably exacerbate poverty and plunge more households over that threshold.

Shortages in arable land has been worsened by the recent acquisition of over 23,000 hectares of farmland by the biofuel multinational, Biofuel Africa Ltd. The company intends to use the land for the cultivation of the Jatropha plant which is very rich in oil and used for the production of biogas. This practice is common in the Northern region of the country, where the lands are owned by the local chiefs of the villages. Chiefs who decide to sell the land to mining companies rather than lease it to farmers, have left farmers jobless and without any other land to farm. The farmers’ lands were sold off without any of them being actively consulted. Many have been frustrated by this sale decrying a loss of their source of livelihood. Some were lucky to get jobs with the biofuel company. There are still talks on relocating the other farmers to new farmlands according to an IRIN report of September 16th, 2009.

The result sometimes is a massive rural exodus into already overpopulated urban areas. This usually means more buildings in the cities and reduction in the green belts, necessary for a balanced natural environment. Following the recent disastrous floods along West Africa, some environmentalists agree that migration movement does affect climate change and needs to be tackled by policy makers.

The renowned environmentalist, Norman Myers, quoted by IRIN news on Friday, 18th September said ‘”hundreds of millions of people could be driven from their homes by environmental crises and degradation by 2040.” This situation screams worst for those living in cities within seaways.

Mining companies have more liberty in Ghana compared to other mining countries. The government incentive to encourage their presence has led to concessions for these companies’ taxes and accorded them rights to re-locate communities considered an obstruction to reaching the mines. There have been cases not long ago where some village hospitals or health centres were bulldozed to the ground because they stood on potential gold mines. Organisations such as WACAM and FIAN (Foodfirst Information and Action Network) have fought fiercely against the mining companies for the human rights of the communities.

The latter organisation deals mostly with exposing violations of human rights and their right to food. FIAN has been consistent in its fight against the Newmont group establishing another mine in Ahafo. FIAN together with WACAM and Earthworks launched a campaign to stop the World Bank’s IFC (International Finance Corporation) loan to the Newmont group in 2005. Newmont, one of the largest gold multinationals in the world, invested around $350 million in Ghana in 2003. The multinational was strongly supported by former President John Agyekum Kufuor. In an interview to Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) on December 19, 2003, Newmont spokesman Doug Hock said that they had chosen Ghana because it was a ‘”mining-friendly country’”.

But the Newmont group has been criticised for violating human rights and poor establishment of relations with the mining communities. Their proposition to open the mine in Ahafo triggered already existent problems such as the dislocation of farming communities from their agricultural lands. The compensation packages usually offered in cash, tendered by the Newmont group was insufficient. The multinational advanced that it was not obliged to provide land for those displaced as reported by FIAN. The IFC however, decided to make an example of the Newmont project at Ahafo. They declared their commitment to illustrate how to handle environmental, social and community development issues in Ghana. FIAN’s campaign coordinator, Ute Hausmann said that the danger of contamination of surface and ground water from mining refuse remains ‘real and immediate’.

The Ghanaian government faced criticism in the past for not taking action against mining multinationals. The fact that multinationals do not publish their profit records to enable Ghanaian public knowledge of their earnings or the taxes they actually pay to their government has left many incensed. Though there have been attempts at transparency recently by these companies, it still appears to be a gradual process.

There is a need for the Parliament to recognise and address the woes of the mining communities and take incentives to pass policies governing how mining is conducted in Ghana. The WACAM report called on the government to establish binding standards for the mining industry or deal with ‘enormous mine legacies with huge financial, social and environmental costs to the communities and the nation’.

There have been no demands from the government to these mining giants to develop the infrastructure of the communities from which they mine. Hence, the need to have policies to tackle environmental degradation that make mining companies pay for pollution, take precautions and preventative action, and obtain informed consent from the communities before beginning mining operations.”

The former government did not handle the mining issue to the communities’ satisfaction. This has been rolled over to the new government whose stance on this issue is yet undefined. In a country where agriculture co-exists alongside gold mining, the country will face economic difficulties if we must choose between agriculture and gold. As gold mining is important for the survival of the Ghanaian economy, so is agriculture for the sustenance of its population and economy.

By Pamela D. Bongkiyung (NGO News Africa) www.ngonewsafrica.org