The Ghanaian government has significantly ramped up the approval of mining permits under legislation passed in late 2022, intensifying concerns about runaway environmental damage.
The country is already the top gold producer in Africa, but much of the mining is done in forest reserves and other biodiverse ecosystems.
The government has long cracked down on artisanal illegal gold miners, but activists say the real damage is being wrought by industrial operations, both legal and illegal.
A debt default in 2022 has seen Ghana lean even more heavily on its gold to mitigate the crisis, prompting warnings that such a policy is neither economically nor environmentally sustainable.
In 2022, the West African nation of Ghana lost 18,000 hectares, or 44,500 acres, of forests — an area the size of 30,000 football fields.
But instead of strengthening restrictions, that November, the Ghanaian government decided to further expose the country’s protected woodlands to the corrosive effects of mineral extraction. The legislative changes allowed mining in critical biodiversity areas, relaxed rules for obtaining exploitation permits, and opened the door to more mining in forest reserves.
Even before the measure was passed, many of Ghana’s protected forests were exposed. Environmental campaigners had been advocating for curbing mining in these reserves altogether. The country has fought a highly publicized battle against small-scale artisanal miners, known as galamsey, yet the effects of industrial-scale mineral extraction have gone largely ignored.
Between 2000 and 2019, industrial mining was the leading cause of forest loss in Ghana, putting it in the same category as countries like Indonesia and Brazil, which have vastly larger forest areas.
‘Gold for oil,’ forests for gold?
Gold has always been central to the Ghanaian economy. Under British colonial rule, this West African nation was known as the Gold Coast.
In 2022, Ghana was the largest producer of gold in Africa, putting out 3.7 million ounces, or 105 metric tons. That same year, the country saw a jump in its industrial mining output, recording its highest ever production: 3.1 million ounces (88 metric tons) of gold.
But years of extraction of this precious metal have diminished the country in other ways: mutilating landscapes, destroying forests, polluting waterways, and degrading farmland.