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Sustainability assessment of mine-affected communities in Ghana: towards ecosystems and livelihood restoration

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  • Sustainability Science for Meeting Africa’s Challenges
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Abstract

Since the 1980s, many regions in Africa that are rich in mineral resources have undertaken significant reforms to attract foreign investments. While the reforms have broadly boosted mineral production and spurred economic growth, there is a general feeling among stakeholders in the mining sector that such investments have not lived up to their rhetorical promise of improving human well-being. In Ghana, such concerns are particularly pronounced in localities that host mining activities. In such areas, mining can have a series of sustainability impacts that affect manifold the local environment and the local communities. However, there is very little effort to systematically assess the local impacts of mining in Ghana and Africa in general. Our study develops a composite sustainability index that can provide a holistic assessment of the local sustainability impacts of mining. We apply this index to understand the sustainability of three communities surrounding the gold mine of the Newmont Ghana Gold Ltd., in the Ahafo South District of Brong Ahafo region. We combine indicators that represent the key local environmental, social, economic, and institutional impacts of mining to assess local sustainability during the active stages of mine development and operation. We use a series of different methodologies and participatory techniques to arrive at the different indicators, as well as to rate them. Results suggest that despite some between-community similarities for some environmental impacts, the local communities often had radically different scores for social, economic, and institutional aspects of sustainability. Based on the findings, we argue that restoration efforts need to be customized to reflect the between-community variation and go beyond simple landscape reclamation to include interventions that improve human well-being, secure infrastructure, and enhance the collaboration among stakeholders to enable the affected local communities’ transition to sustainability.

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Source: Adapted and modified from Antwi et al. (2014)

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Notes

  1. An SDI of zero suggests that the landscape contains only one patch and thus no diversity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Todai Institute for Advanced Study, Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science (IR3S), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Effah Kwabena Antwi

  2. University of Ghana, Computer Engineering, Legon, Accra, Ghana

    Wiafe Owusu-Banahene

  3. Rivers, Forests, and Life Foundation, Legon, P. O. Box 25, Anyinam, E/R, Ghana

    John Boakye-Danquah

  4. Department of Risk Management, Yokohama National University, Yokhama, Japan

    Ruby Mensah

  5. Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana

    Jacob Doku Tetteh

  6. United Nations University-Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), 53-70, Jingumae 5-chome, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, 150-8925, Japan

    Effah Kwabena Antwi & Masafumi Nagao

  7. Integrated Research System for Sustainability Science (IR3S), Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), University of Tokyo, Hayama, Tokyo, Japan

    Kazuhiko Takeuchi

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  1. Effah Kwabena Antwi
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  2. Wiafe Owusu-Banahene
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Correspondence to Effah Kwabena Antwi.

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Handled by Alexandros Gasparatos, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

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Antwi, E.K., Owusu-Banahene, W., Boakye-Danquah, J. et al. Sustainability assessment of mine-affected communities in Ghana: towards ecosystems and livelihood restoration. Sustain Sci 12, 747–767 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-017-0474-9

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