Guns and fires: The use of military force to eradicate informal mining

Abstract

Governments across the globe are increasingly adopting a more aggressive approach to combat informal artisanal mining, including the deployment of the military to prevent environmental pollution, restore degraded sites, improve environmental quality, and ensure a sustainable ecosystem. The military approach has often lacked effective stakeholder participation and failed to curb informal mining. We contribute to the debate on this subject by focusing on Ghana's military intervention to eradicate informal artisanal mining. Informal mining continues in the country's forests and waters unabated despite the fatalities, gunshot injuries, burning of excavators, and destruction of mining tools resulting from the recent military strategy – ‘Operation Halt.’ We conclude that the use of military force will have little and unsustainable effect to eradicate informal artisanal mining when the factors driving the participation in the mining activities are circumvented. Addressing the problem of unemployment, improving mineral governance and legislation in the artisanal mining sector, undertaking strategic and inclusive stakeholder engagements, and controlling partisan political decisions and participation could ensure a sustainable mining sector and eliminate the need for military force. The absence of alternative livelihoods that could provide adequate incomes for the miners would make it extremely difficult for the government to control informal mining.