Researching for a new book, I have been in Ghana for the last two weeks interviewing faith leaders on what religious organisations can do to facilitate environmental sustainability. Both
Christian and Muslim leaders point to Ghana’s small-scale gold mining sector – popularly known as galamsey – as a key cause of the country’s environmental crisis.
Ghana’s small-scale gold mining sector has recently transitioned from a localised, artisanal livelihood into a structural crisis of governance, national security, and ecological survival.
Galamsey illustrates the profound limits of state capacity when confronted with the dual pressures of globalised capital and entrenched domestic patronage.
Manifested on the ground as an ecological disaster, galamsey is also an abject failure of regulatory authority, subverted by electoral calculations and institutional co-optation.
Small-scale mining in the past
Traditionally, small-scale mining provided a vital economic safety valve for rural youth lacking formal employment.
However, the contemporary manifestation of galamsey is quite different.
It is characterised by heavy mechanisation, the introduction of foreign capital, and widespread use of hazardous chemicals like mercury and cyanide.
Technological escalation has turned a manageable environmental footprint into an existential threat.
Rivers that have sustained communities for generations, such as the Pra, Ankobra and Brim, are now toxic, silt-laden channels. Forest reserves are systematically degraded, threatening both biodiversity and long-term agricultural sustainability, particularly in the cocoa sector, which remains a cornerstone of Ghana’s macroeconomy.
Structural governance issues
From a governance perspective, the persistence of illegal mining exposes a glaring paradox in Ghana’s democracy.
Ghana is frequently – and quite rightly – celebrated as a beacon of stable constitutional democracy in West Africa, boasting regular transitions of power and a robust civil society.
Yet the state’s inability – or unwillingness – to enforce environmental laws against galamsey reveals a severe deficit in structural governance.
The disconnect is explained by the political dynamics of Ghana’s duopoly, where the two dominant parties, the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party, compete fiercely for electoral dominance, particularly in resource-rich rural swing constituencies.
In these closely contested districts, enforceability is a serious problem.
When a government attempts a proactive crackdown – deploying military task forces to destroy excavators or arresting miners – it triggers a localised electoral backlash.
Come election time, opposition parties have historically capitalised on this resentment, perhaps promising a more permissive approach to mining if elected.
Consequently, both parties are trapped in an electoral prisoner's dilemma: neither can afford to fully enforce the law without risking a catastrophic loss of rural votes. The environment becomes the ultimate casualty of Ghana’s notorious political partisanship.
Beyond electoral politics
Beyond electoral politics, galamsey is sustained by a deeply entrenched network of political patronage.
The capital required to purchase excavators, secure industrial pumps, and allegedly bribe local officials does not originate from impoverished rural youth.
It comes from powerful, often invisible, syndicates that bridge the gap between formal state structures and the informal economy.
These networks involve a complex web of actors, including local chiefs, influential businessmen, security personnel, and high-ranking political figures.
Distributing economic largesse to local elites, these syndicates build a formidable barrier of resistance against state intervention.
When state institutions attempt to intervene, their efforts are frequently neutralised by ‘orders from above’, which disempower regulatory bodies, such as the Minerals Commission and the Environmental
Protection Agency. As a result, the rule of law is effectively replaced by a system of informal transactional governance.
This governance vacuum has stimulated civil society organisations (CSOs) against galamsey, including the University Teachers Association of Ghana, the Trade Union Congress, environmental NGOs and some religious bodies, notably the leadership of the Catholic Church.
They demand an absolute ban on mining and prospecting in forest reserves, stricter judicial penalties for illegal miners, and a complete depoliticisation of the regulatory framework.
However, civil society interventions face significant structural barriers.
While urban-based elites and academic unions frame galamsey as an unmitigated environmental disaster, local mining communities often view it through the lens of economic survival. In the absence of viable state-provided alternative livelihoods, a heavy-handed ban risks criminalising thousands of citizens and exacerbating rural poverty.
This creates a volatile socio-political cleavage between an urban intelligentsia demanding ecological preservation and a rural populace dependent on resource extraction.
Galamsey and Ghana’s environmental future
The galamsey crisis confirms that environmental degradation is inextricably linked to the structural realities of political power.
The state’s response to illegal mining has so far relied on episodic, militarised crackdowns, which focus on the symptoms of the crisis, not its systemic causes.
Results include human rights abuses and localised violence, leaving elite patronage networks unscathed.
All agree that Ghana must do more to avert an ecological collapse.
Faith leaders proclaim that Ghanaians must practise ‘creation care’: God has entrusted us with environmental stewardship, not ecological destructiveness.
Many Ghanaians would agree that it is wrong to destroy everyone’s environment for the short-term riches of the few.
Many would agree with their faith leaders that more must be done to combat galamsey.
But until there are alternative sources of reasonably lucrative employment for rural youth, galamsey will continue to put food on the table of millions of Ghanaians in defiance of faith leaders’ concerns.
The writer is Emeritus Professor of Politics, London Metropolitan University, UK.
