Relationship between small-scale gold mining activities and water use in Ghana: A review of policy documents aimed at protecting water bodies in mining communities

Abstract

This study compares the important policy documents that control Ghana's mining industry's impacts on water resources to what is being done in similar African countries, to extract some fundamental principles and point out the inadequacies of these key documents. This study aimed to review existing literature on the relationship between small-scale mining (SSM) activities, with a focus on identifying key policy gaps and potential solutions to mitigate the negative impacts of these activities on water resources. The study further compares mining regulations of some key gold mining countries including South Africa, China, Nigeria, and Indonesia. A total of 128 published papers and reports were used in this study. The study found two major obstacles to ensuring safe and effective water use in Ghana's mining industry. The failure to implement previously existing restrictions, as well as a poor regulatory framework for the mining sector fails to adequately address the implications of mining activities on the environment and water resources. Furthermore, the mining industry's concentration on water use, particularly for small-scale miners, ignores the legacy impacts of such mines or the long-term effects of small-scale mining. Even for SSMs, it is suggested that there be an imposed aspect on the concurrent treatment and reusability of water with mining operations. By taking a distinct approach to the two primary types of mining activity, the issue of enforcement of current restrictions might be addressed. The SSMs' complex organization and less regulated nature necessitate a unique approach that takes advantage of the SSMs' de facto leaders in enforcing water use compliance. The authors propose that the recently established small-scale mining district centres be used as a conduit to employ these informal structures in enforcing compliance on water use in the SSMs and that as part of the mining district's broad technical assistance functions, the SSMs' leadership be trained on safe water use practices and simple water treatment and restoration techniques such as bioremediation and verification. This will ensure that this area of the mining industry is better controlled.