ACCRA  –  When activist Oliver Barker Vormawor saw reports in September that Ghana’s water agency would not be able to supply some parts of the country with water due to extreme contamination of main rivers from small-scale mining activities, he knew he had to do something. Later that month, Vormawor and dozens of other concerned Ghanaians took to the streets in the capital city, Accra, to protest against what they said was President Nana Akufo-Addo’s inaction to stop a “looming environmental catastrophe”. They were determined to put the matter on the ballot ahead of the hotly contested December general elections. But rather than get a reaction to their demands, Vormawor and several of his comrades were arrested and imprisoned for weeks on charges of illegal assembly.

Now, although Akufo-Addo’s New Patriotic Party was voted out, activists like Vormawor say they have just as little faith in the new president, John Mahama, and his ability to keep the mounting pollution of Ghana’s rivers and soil in check. “There isn’t any roadmap yet from Mahama on how to tackle the problem,” Vormawor, who once served at the United Nations as a legal officer, told Al Jazeera. “It’s really difficult to say that his government will be more aggressive on this because even as the opposition party, they were very tentative and uncomfortable taking up the issue,” he added, referring to Mahama’s National Democratic Congress. Formerly called the “Gold Coast”, the West African nation is bending under pressure from widespread, incessant small-scale mining of the shiny metal. Much of that artisanal activity falls under what locals call “galamsey”, or in full “gather them and sell”. The term once referred to illegal mining, carried out by mostly untrained young men and women, but now more loosely encompasses licensed small-scale operations that mine unsustainably.

Galamsey has been in practice for many years, but prices of gold that rose globally to an all-time high (close to USD 3,000 per gram) in late 2024 caused a corresponding surge in illegal mining across Ghana, and in effect, more intense devastation of water bodies. Small-scale miners use lots of water by digging up soil around riverbeds in forested areas and washing it off to reveal gold ore. They use toxic chemicals such as mercury and cyanide to separate the gold from the ore, and those chemicals flow into rivers that hundreds of communities depend on for drinking and domestic use. Some people say they earn about USD 70 to USD 100 a day. By 2017, more than 60 percent of the country’s water bodies were already polluted by mercury and other heavy metals, turning once-clear rivers a murky brown, according to the country’s Water Resources Commission. The chemicals, which can damage lungs, are affecting thousands of acres of farmlands. Ghana’s Cocoa Board said it lost 2 percent of the total cocoa cultivation area to mining. Some farmers allege that galamsey operators buy off their land or intimidate them into selling. “This is a problem that has been going on for decades now, but it’s a problem that’s escalating fast and this has created a sense among Ghanaians that we are running out of time to protect our country and our people,” Ewurabena Yanyi-Akofur, country director of the nongovernmental organisation WaterAid, told Al Jazeera. “While illegal gold mining was happening mainly in the south of the country, our research shows that it’s now endemic in the north. The presence of mercury and other toxins in water is leading to skin diseases and other health crises,” she added. In a 2024 report, WaterAid warned that Ghana might have to import water by 2030 in a business-as-usual scenario as drinking water sources shrink. (Al  Jazeera/AFP)