Ghana:
Newmont Mining Corp. threatens Ajenjua Bepo Forest and neighbouring
communities
The US-based Newmont Mining Corporation, one of the world's largest
producers of gold, has plans to place an open pit gold mine in the
Ajenjua Bepo Forest Reserve in the Birim North District in the Eastern
region of Ghana.
The organization No Dirty Gold informs that the projected mine would
occupy an area 1.65 miles long (2.6 km) and a half mile across (0.8
km), and would create waste piles 60-100 m high. The mine would
destroy an estimated 183 acres (74 ha) of forest in the reserve.
Mining is a short-term activity with long-term
effects and when it takes place in forest zones, it is a factor
of forest destruction and degradation from the prospecting phase
–when routes of access are open, camps and auxiliary facilities
are established, geophysical works are carried out— to the exploitation
phase, with great elimination of vegetation that not only affects
the habitat of hundreds of species but also the maintenance of a
constant flow of water from the forests towards other ecosystems
and urban centres.
A self-perpetuated dumping of acid toxic material is generated that
can go on for hundreds or even thousands of years. Furthermore,
the small particulates of heavy metals that with time separate from
the waste, are disseminated by the wind, landing on the soil and
in the beds of watercourses, slowly integrating the tissues of living
organisms, such as fish.
Water is manifold affected: by the consequent erosion and silting
produced by excavation, by the acid drainage that contaminate it,
by the forest destruction that disturbs rainfall patterns.
The threatened Ajenjua Bepo forest is critically important to several
neighbouring communities that fear the project
may displace them or ruin the crops that they rely on. According
to No Dirty Gold, community groups in the area “including the Concerned
Farmers Association at New Abriem, have protested against Newmont's
mining plan and the inadequate compensation Newmont has offered
for ruining their lands and livelihoods. They have gathered over
200 petition signatures to present to the Ghanaian government. ‘We
have been spending sleepless nights thinking about the trauma of
relocation, loss of farmlands and livelihood, new diseases especially
the upsurge in malaria cases as a result of the open pits and other
stagnant pools of water in the open trenches that will be created
in the area by Newmont Ghana Gold Limited,’ said Akosua Nsia of
Yayaaso, one of the communities in the mine's direct footprint area.”
(1)
International support came from over 6000 signatures from more than
50 countries across the world “urging the Government of Ghana to
resist any attraction to grant license to any mining company to
undertake mining in the controversial Ajenua Bepo Forest or any
other forest in the country.” (2)
The signatories denounce that permitting mining in the Ajenua Bepo
Forest would displace over a thousand people from their homes and
at least 8,000 people would lose their land. “The available information
on the probable impacts of the mine indicate that the mine’s impacts
on biodiversity, forest cover, water quality, and communities would
be extremely serious. Over a quarter of the forest in the Reserve
would be destroyed, as would habitat for many Endangered and Vulnerable
species, and wastes and toxic chemicals would threaten the water
supply. Thousands of people and important cultural sites would be
displaced.”
The mining project comes at a time when a grim picture of mining
impacts in Ghana has been exposed by Ghana's Commission on Human
Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) in a report that found
evidence of “widespread violations of human rights of individual
members of communities and communities’ collective rights” and “widespread
pollution of communities’ water sources, deprivation and loss of
livelihoods.” (3)
(1) Akyem Proposed Mine, Ghana, No Dirty Gold,
http://www.nodirtygold.org/ghanaakyem.cfm
(2) Ghana: 6,000 Signatures against Mining Concession, Selorm Amevor,
Public Agenda,
http://www.ghanaweb.com/public_agenda/article.php?ID=11743
(3) The State of Human Rights in Mining Communities in Ghana,
http://www.nodirtygold.org/HumanRightsInGhanaMiningCommunities.pdf
