Environmental Justice: Why The Worst Polluters Are In Poor Nations - Plus Ideas For Change!

The need for faster economic growth in the poor nations of the world has often forced their governments - ever keen to be seen by their people to be working hard to provide desperately needed jobs - to accept foreign direct investment that sometimes has dire consequences for the natural environment, and the health of many of their citizens.

Unless countries such as Ghana step out of the shadow of conventional economic thinking, which makes them think almost exclusively of GDP growth without actually examining what constitutes that growth, they will continue to attract investors relocating "dirty industries" from the developed world in droves.

Yet, it is essential that economic development in nations such as Ghana, is sustainable: so that economic policy today, takes into account the needs of future generations of Ghanaians: who ought to be able to, at the barest minimum, enjoy the same standards of living as the present generation of Ghanaians.

It is the absence of such an ethos underlining economic policy in many African nations today, which makes it so easy for African politicians -  enthralled by the wealth and power of multinational mining companies - to permit callous polluters, such as some of the sly and greedy surface gold mining companies in Ghana (which come mainly from developed nations where surface gold mining is frowed upon), to operate with complete impunity in many parts of the continent.

Sadly, countless numbers of rural people are harmed by the dangerous chemicals and heavy metals, such as mercury and cyanide, used in the operations of the surface gold mining companies, which leech into soils and contaminate the sources of the drinking water of scores of African villages near mining areas: as does the natural environment of the countryside, itself.

In the case of Ghana, those companies, driven by the unfathomable greed that fuels their ruthless and relentless pursuit of profits, mainly at the expense of the quality of life of the poor rural communities, which border their concessions, have poisoned vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside for decades now.

At the town of Obuasi, for example, where the single richest gold mine in the world is located, and where gold has been mined for centuries, the only things the indigenous people have to show for all the untold wealth that has been shipped overseas over the years, are enduring poverty and contaminated oranges: the growing of which constitute an important part of the local economy, and in which traces of arsenic have consistently been found in tests.

Alas, rural people in many African nations will continue to live with the most negative consequences of globalisation: because their governments accept investment from some of the worst polluters from the developed world, such as surface gold mining companies - many of which have deliberately chosen the much cheaper option of surface gold mining (which is sensibly frowned upon in their own home countries), over the more expensive underground mining: traditionally undertaken in Ghana for centuries until the nation's leaders were infected by the lethal Washington-consensus-bug: and foolishly agreed to permit surface gold mining in Ghana.

Virtually all those surface gold mining companies have simply relocated to Ghana because they cannot meet the stringent environmental standards set by their home countries: to protect the natural environment and to safeguard the health of their citizens.

A case in point is the horrific story of a defunct Canadian-owned surface gold mining company, Bonte, which was given the farmlands of the inhabitants of Bonte, a village in the Western Region of Ghana, as their mining concession. When the company finally folded up, it left a landscape akin to that found on the moon, and a string of debt: including money owed to its unpaid workers and suppliers of goods and services to the company.

And because it never posted the reclamation bond required by regulators, from which a clean-up of the environment after it ceased operating would have been paid, the hapless inhabitants of Bonte are no longer able to farm as a result of the complete degradation of their land - and now eke out a miserable living panning for gold in a hell-on-earth-existence.

Yet, the shameless Canadian operators of the defunct Bonte, continue to live as free men in their native Canada - and it is as if the leaders of Ghana don't know that they can even sue them there: for their crimes against humanity in Ghana.

And a proud and honest rural people have been reduced to penury - whiles vast swathes of once-pristine countryside have been destroyed in degradation that is of truly apocalyptic proportions. Yet, their forefathers lived in complete harmony with nature, before their first contact with Western civilisation.

Many of the traditional cultural practises of Ghanaians, such as the ban on hunting and fishing, during certain seasons; and the taboo that prohibits the killing of certain species of animals, such as the famous Mona monkeys, which have lived together with villagers of the Asante village of Boabeng Feama for centuries, ensured that they always lived in balance with nature.

The monkeys, which are regarded by the villagers as sacred beings, and are mourned and buried like human family relations when they die, have thrived: and their populations in the area have not only survived, but grown, unlike populations in other parts of the country where they have been hunted over the years - because they were not regarded as sacred by the indigenous people.

Clearly the blind pursuit of GDP growth, in the final analysis, certainly does more harm than good to the overall quality of life of the citizens of nations like Ghana: because of the harm caused to the natural environment by pollution resulting from the operations of companies that engage in the monstrous "race-for-the-bottom" type of investment: in which polluting multinational companies search for countries with the weakest environmental legislation and the weakest state environmental protection agencies, to relocate in.

A recent function attended by the president of the West African nation of Ghana, as well as the executives of the foreign mining companies operating in the country (which was held to mark the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Ghanaian mining industry's main industry body: the Ghana Chamber of Mines), illustrates perfectly, the power of the mining lobby in Ghana: where they operate with near-total impunity - often under the protection of security forces billeted on towns in the restive mining areas of the country, to save them from the growing wrath of local people.

The symbolism of the nation's leader honouring the members of an industry, which has poisoned vast swathes of the Ghanaian countryside over the years (and gotten away with it, successfully), with his presence at the event, was not lost on environmental activists in Ghana.

For, as in all the nations of Africa where they operate, the mining lobby is one of the most powerful in the country - and it has used its clout and baleful influence over Ghana's political elite, to enable the industry get away with activities, which would shame and horrify most of their Western shareholders: were they to become aware of them.

And for the rural poor across Africa (who suffer the consequences of the impunity of players in the industry), it is the same story: as their nations, blessed with gold and other mineral deposits - and desperate to attract foreign direct investment to spur GDP growth and create much-needed jobs, put the blind pursuit of GDP growth, ahead of their quality of life - as if that too was not a prime indicator of a nation's prosperity and progress.

Saddled with a highly-educated ruling elite whose main priority is the promotion of its self-interest, the poor in the rural areas where mining activity takes place in Ghana (and other African nations like it), have been abandoned to their fate - by a system that has failed them completely, and has left them impoverished: as their quality of life has deteriorated steadily over the years. They are the veritable victims of today's globalisation.


No longer having access to their farmlands (taken away from them by the stroke of the pens of officialdom - at various levels of Ghana's ponderous machinery of state - who work and live in the comfort of their elitist air-conditioned cocoons in far-away Accra, Ghana's capital city), those poor villagers (the weakest strata in modern Ghanaian society) are also the forgotten victims of the so-called "Washington consensus".

That ideology, much favoured by Western neo-cons (and which largely underpins globalisation), was the brain-child of wealthy Western bankers and right-wing politicians, who did not have the nous to understand that there is a world of difference (in terms of the desired and expected results of free-market economic policies), between the matured markets of Western capitalism (which are fairly predictable), and that of the economically-impoverished environments of the developing-world: which are not.

Thus, today, the erstwhile owners of the aforementioned farmlands in rural Ghana, which now form part of the mining concessions of powerful multinational mining companies operating in the country, are worse off materially, than they were before the arrival of the surface mining companies: because it escaped the World Bank and the IMF (as they urged the military regime in power then - in the 1980's - to permit surface gold mining in the country, for the first time in Ghana's history) that the possible harm, which surface gold mining could cause to Ghana and its people, would be incalculable (in quality-of-life, terms).

The blind pursuit of GDP growth, and the combination of the class-interests of a largely self-serving ruling elite, and the unfathomable greed driving the search for profits by the multinational gold mining companies, meant that at the time there was a meeting of minds (of all concerned in this crime against humanity), to the extent that concern for the environmental impact of the operations of the surface gold mining companies, was simply not part of the equation: and was therefore a non-issue.

So, dear reader, the question is: what can be done to mitigate some of the harmful effects of this race to the bottom, by environmentally irresponsible companies that relocate to nations like Ghana, simply in order to take advantage of weak environmental legislation? What is needed to protect the environment and the health and well being of all living creatures in rural Ghana?

To avoid disasters, such as that which has befallen some farmers in rural Ghana, there is need for a push by those in Africa who are concerned with preserving the biodiversity of nations on the continent, for the use of income-generating strategies, such as the development of community-based eco-tourism destinations, to create wealth in rural Africa - particularly at a time of global climate change.

For, such schemes would make poor African nations less vulnerable to the blandishments of those who seek to exchange worthless bric-a-brac, for access to valuable gold deposits in 21st century Africa, for example.

And in the light of the discovery of large deposits of oil and natural gas off the shores of Ghana, there is renewed hope amongst environmental activists in Ghana, that the baleful influence of the powerful mining lobby, can be finally curtailed - as yet other sources of revenue open up for the nation: and consequently weakens their hold over those who rule the country.

Hopefully, it will help bring about a situation in which the Ghanaian nation need no longer depend on continued investment in the Ghanaian economy, by the players in the gold mining sector - which in over 100 years of exploiting Ghana's gold deposits, has never created the Ghanaian equivalent of a city such as Johannesburg. And that speaks volumes about the predatory nature of the motivation for their presence in Ghana.

Perhaps another key move to make surface gold mining companies in Ghana become more responsible environmentally, would be for the Ghanaian nation-state to act to change the relevant clauses in the articles of association of Ghanaian surface gold mining companies: pertaining specifically to those that limit the liability of shareholders for the environmental damage, arising out of the impact of their operations in the country.

If that were to happen, it would immediately make those shareholders, a majority of whom are from the Western nations, take an active interest in the daily activities of those surface gold mining companies, which they have invested in that operate in Ghana - lest they become personally liable for the harm done to the natural environment in a faraway African nation: which they know virtually nothing about.

Perhaps if environmental awareness amongst Ghana's politicians catches on, perhaps they could go on to prove their new-found concern for the natural environment here, yet further, by passing legislation (with real teeth, and which would have retrospective effect!) making it mandatory for polluters to pay for the future cost of the state having to deal with the consequences of environmental damage, caused in the past, but which Ghana's official environmental agencies are currently unaware of - because such knowledge is currently unavailable to the international scientific research community.

That, dear reader, would definitely make the well-off Western shareholders (who, incidentally, would never dream of allowing surface gold mining anywhere near where they live), take a keen interest in the way those surface gold mining companies operate here.

And justice, hopefully, will finally come for those poor and hapless Ghanaian villagers (and others like them across Africa!), whose lives were turned upside down, when they lost their livelihoods as farmers (when their leaders caved in to pressure from the World Bank and the IMF to permit such an environmentally harmful industry, to operate in their country), and who for decades now have had to lead a miserable and wretched existence, akin to a hell on earth - simply to enable Ghana's surface mining companies, continue piling up super profits: and distribute dividends to happy (largely Western) shareholders, year, after, golden year.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, if environmental activists in Africa worked closely with their counterparts in the West, they might succeed in making the worst of the polluters in the surface gold mining industry (who, in the main, have invested in Africa deliberately, in order to take advantage of the fact that most of the entities charged with protecting the continent's natural environment, are weak institutions), change their ways: by campaigning for tougher laws to protect the natural environment in Africa - a vital need, particularly at a time when global climate change is already having a negative impact on much of the continent's natural environment.