Gold rush triggers environmental disaster

Mercury is increasingly being used to extract gold by miners digging on a massive scale in Ghana’s forests and farms, degrading land and polluting rivers to such an extent that the charity WaterAid has called it ‘ecocide’. ‘I could actually paint with the water. It was so bad,’ artist Israel Apeti told the BBC. The West African state is the world's sixth-biggest gold exporter, and the second-biggest cocoa exporter. Demonstrators recently took to the streets of Accra to demand that the government take action to end the illegal mining. The police responded by detaining dozens of protesters accused of holding an illegal gathering. They were later released as anger grew over the arrests. The devastation has been caused because the nature of illegal mining has changed. Previously, young unemployed men dug with picks and shovels, or their bare hands, to search for gold. They also relied on panning – the washing of sediment through a sieve so the gold settles at the bottom. But Chinese businessmen, who first moved to Ghana around 18 years ago, have made it a more sophisticated industry. They are accused of ignoring environmental concerns. An estimated 4 726ha of land have been destroyed in seven of the country's 16 regions, and 34 of its 288 forest reserves, Ghana Forestry Commission head John Allotey was quoted as saying in August.

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