Artisanal Gold Mining and Surface Water Pollution in Ghana: Have the Foreign Invaders Come to Stay?

Artisanal gold mining (ASM) is environmentally damaging and often has deleterious health effects for miners and surrounding communities. The absence of effective legal frameworks and secure rights for miners and communities in Ghana exacerbates this problem. From May 2009 to July 2012, we conducted interviews and focus group discussions with artisanal miners, government officials, policymakers, traditional leaders, and large-scale miners in order to examine the conflicts over access and land-use. The results show that a number of factors pose challenges to the willingness of artisanal to mine legally: the legal framework is incoherent; the human, financial, and material resources to enforce the laws (including decentralized structures) are almost non-existent; and, the political will to execute the laws (including control and sanctions on infractions) is limited. Although artisanal mining is reserved for indigenes, the Chinese, Indians, and Serbs have entered and consolidated their niches in the ASM sector. The metamorphosis of the Chinese and other foreigners from large-scale mining investors into artisanal miners is attributable to collusion with self-seeking citizens to circumvent the Minerals and Mining Act. Interestingly, there is ambivalence, which is expressed in citizen's complaints of environmental pollution against the Chinese. Also, three gaps in the legal framework account for the proliferation of foreigners in artisanal gold mining in Ghana: definition of who a mining investor is; lack of provision for mining rights for communities; and ambiguity of some provisions in the framework. The principal reason for policy failure in the ASM sector is that the current intervention mechanisms are predominantly of a technical order and do not take into account the complex socio-political realities in gold mining areas.