Ghana’s unlawful gold mining business causes environmental destruction

Water from a polluted river in Ghana was so thick and discoloured that an artist was ready to make use of it as paint to depict the environmental devastation brought on by the unlawful gold mining that has unfold like wildfire within the resource-rich West African state.

Mercury is more and more getting used to extract gold by miners digging on a large scale in forests and farms, degrading land and polluting rivers to such an extent that the charity WaterAid has known as it “ecocide”.

“I could actually paint with the water. It was so bad,” Israel Derrick Apeti, higher often known as Enil Artwork, instructed the BBC.

He and his buddy Jay Sterling visited the Pra River – round 200km (125 miles) west of the capital, Accra – to make a degree concerning the environmental disaster unfolding due to “galamsey”.

That is the time period utilized by locals to explain the unlawful mining happening at hundreds of websites across the nation – together with the forested areas well-known for his or her cocoa farms, in addition to their huge gold deposits.

The West African state is the world’s sixth-biggest gold exporter, and the second-biggest cocoa exporter.

Demonstrators not too long ago took to the streets of Accra to demand that the federal government take motion to finish the unlawful mining. The police responded by detaining dozens of protesters accused of holding an unlawful gathering. They had been later launched as anger grew over the arrests.

The hashtags #stopgalamseynow and #freethecitizens had been used to galvanise younger individuals throughout Ghana and the diaspora, notably in Canada and the UK, to voice their issues.

Apeti instructed the BBC that he had determined to contribute to the marketing campaign via artwork.

“What is art for?” he stated, including: “On our way to the river, I just thought I could perhaps paint with the polluted water. It just came to me like that. So, we got there, I tried it and it worked out.”

Communities alongside the river – one of many greatest in Ghana – lamented to Apeti that the water was “once so clean that you could see the fish and crocodiles that lived in it”, but it surely had been remodeled “into a yellowish-brown body of water”.

Ghana’s music stars have additionally thrown their weight behind the marketing campaign.

Black Sherif – who hails from Konongo city within the Ashanti area, which has been badly affected by the unlawful mining – stopped his set at The Tidal Rave Live performance in Accra earlier this month to indicate a video of the devastation.

Reality Ofori, who was a part of Black Sherif’s set, then sang a patriotic track known as “This is our home”, whereas Stonebowy used his set to carry out “Greedy Men”, which focused these behind galamsey.

The devastation has been brought on by the truth that the character of unlawful mining has modified – beforehand, younger unemployed males dug with picks and shovels, or their naked fingers, to seek for gold.

Additionally they relied on panning – the washing of sediment via a sieve so the gold settles on the backside.

However Chinese language businessmen – who first moved to Ghana round 18 years in the past – have made it a extra subtle business.

They’re accused of ignoring environmental issues and taking to coronary heart an age-old saying: “There is no land in Ghana which doesn’t have gold, even in the top soil. Ghana is gold.”

Certainly, throughout colonial occasions the nation was often known as the Gold Coast.

Some native businessmen and politicians are extensively suspected to have joined them in what has been dubbed “the mad gold rush”, shopping for out cocoa farms and turning them into unlawful mining websites.

They’ve additionally been accused of utilizing intimidation if a farmer refuses to promote by digging up footpaths, and forcing them to ultimately surrender the land.

An estimated 4,726 hectares of land – greater than the dimensions of European cities like Athens and Brussels – have been destroyed in seven of the nation’s 16 areas, and 34 of its 288 forest reserves, Ghana Forestry Fee head John Allotey was quoted as saying in August.

Agricultural growth marketing consultant Dr John Manful instructed the BBC that “precious, valuable land” within the forest belt had been destroyed by the gold-seekers.

“Illegal small-scale mining has been taking place for decades in Ghana. However, in recent years, it has been getting out of control, having catastrophic effects,” he stated.

The mining has led to the felling of bushes, and the clearing of huge areas of forest vegetation. Excavators are then used to dig out the highest soil and subsoil.

The soil is then deposited at gold-washing vegetation stationed in rivers, and water is pumped to clean the soil and crushed stones.

Throughout the washing course of, numerous chemical substances, together with mercury and cyanide, are used to assist extract the gold from the soil, polluting massive and small rivers.

Highlighting the hazards of this, Dr George Manful, a former senior official in Ghana’s Environmental Safety Company, stated: “Mercury can remain in water for up to 1,000 years. The water in these rivers is so turbid that it is undrinkable.”

In an interview with native broadcaster Pleasure FM, he additionally identified that mercury might have an effect on the whole meals chain, because it accumulates in fish and may enter crops irrigated with the water.

“We are slowly poisoning ourselves,” Dr Manful added.

For its half, WaterAid urged the federal government to take “immediate action to end the ecocide”, whereas the state water utility warned that Ghana risked turning into an importer of water by 2030 if the unlawful mining was not curbed.

In September, the federal government stated that 76 individuals, together with 18 international nationals, had been convicted of unlawful mining since August 2021, and greater than 850 others had been being prosecuted.

The unlawful mining has additionally affected cocoa manufacturing, with the Ghana Cocoa Board saying in 2021 that greater than 19,000 hectares of farmland had been destroyed in key cocoa-growing areas just like the Western and Ashanti areas.

Repeating the board’s issues earlier this week, its chief govt Joseph Boahen Aidoo stated the manufacturing of cocoa – the important thing ingredient of chocolate – had fallen.

“Yes, it has [taken] a toll on the industry,” he was quoted as saying by Ghana’s Chronicle information website.

The unlawful mining has additionally affected different crops, with a rice farmer within the Ahafo area telling the BBC that she might now not use her close by river for irrigation functions.

“I have to set up a whole plant that involves digging deep to find water, which is very expensive,” she stated.

The farmer, who requested to not be recognized, stated she feared that the disaster would proceed if the highly effective people behind the unlawful mining weren’t arrested and prosecuted.

“When I see arrests by the military in poor communities, it’s just a symbolic gesture of appearing to maintain law and order. The people making big money out of it are in offices, not on the field,” she said.

The government did not respond to a BBC request for comment.

The gold rush has also been fuelled by the fact that the global price of the precious metal has risen to new heights, and is expected to continue doing so.

Ghana’s illegal syndicates are, therefore, boosting production.

The gold is smuggled out – possibly to countries like the United Arab Emirates, China and India – to be refined, mixed with legal gold, and sold on international markets, BBC business reporter Jewel Kiriungi told a World Service podcast that explored the topic.

The illegal industry has also boomed because Ghana, despite being resource-rich, is facing its most severe economic crisis in a generation, with unemployment worsening and the cost of living escalating.

As a result, many poor or jobless people – especially in rural areas – have either been employed by the illegal syndicates, or have simply taken up gold mining on their own, earning up to 2,000 cedis ($125; £96) a week – the average monthly salary of a teacher.

Apeti, the artist, said that when he visited the Pra River, he was told by locals that officials regularly carry out raids, destroying the equipment of miners.

“However that would not be sufficient to discourage them from their quest for gold, as they’d return at evening to begin mining yet again,” he stated.

As protests took place in Accra to highlight the devastation, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo responded last week by ordering the deployment of naval boats “to make sure the quick cessation of all mining actions, authorized or unlawful, in and round these water our bodies”.

But some senior officials in the ruling National Peoples Party (NPP) said they did not expect a major crackdown, as many of their supporters in mining districts were involved in galamsey – and the party could not risk losing their votes in the December general election.

The popularity of galamsey was borne out by a survey conducted by WaterAid in communities involved in illegal mining in Ghana’s Upper East Region, particularly the Bongo and Bawku West districts.

More than 75% of those surveyed saw the practice as a lucrative source of income despite 97% of them acknowledging it harmed the environment and water sources.

“Alarmingly, 79% reported well being points, equivalent to chest pains, instantly linked to their work in unlawful mining,” WaterAid added.

When President Akufo-Addo first took office in 2017, he acknowledged that some security personnel, businessmen and politicians were involved in galamsey.

He vowed “not simply to cease it, to reclaim the land, to let our rivers work once more”, but also to help “all of the abled-bodied younger males concerned on this exercise to search out another livelihood”.

With Akufo-Addo due to step down at the end of his two terms, his critics say that he failed to fulfil his promise and the problem rather got worse during his tenure, jeopardising – as he put it in 2017 – “the very survival of our nation”.