To Move or not to Move: Community Members’ Reaction to Surface Mining Activities in the Upper West Region of Ghana

Abstract

Despite the impact of mining-induced environmental change on community livability, we know little about how disparities in knowledge of health risks associated with mining influence residents’ response, especially in an already environmentally stressed context. Guided by theoretical insights from solastalgia, we examined residents’ decision to relocate due to increasing gold mining activities in the fragile Northern Savannah Ecological Zone of Ghana. Fitting complementary log-log regression models to cross-sectional data from the Upper West Region (UWR) of Ghana, we found that residents with limited knowledge of potential health impacts of mining and those who believe mining activities were not meeting environmental standards were more likely to consider relocating. Given the centrality of land in community health and wellbeing in the UWR, Ghana’s mining guidelines should promote local participation in the regulation of mining activities and guarantee the rights of indigenes to livable native lands.

Keywords:

• Community wellbeing
• environmental sustainability
• Ghana
• migration
• mining
• solastalgia
• Upper West Region

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to the Canada Research Chairs Program for funding this study which is part of a thesis— “Environment and Health Perceptions in the Vicinity of Surface Mining Concessions in the Upper West Region of Ghana.” We will also like to thank our anonymous reviewers for their time and insightful comments that helped improve the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Canada Research Chair funding to Dr. Isaac Luginaah.