Combating Galamsey in Ghana: A Religious Approach

Abstract

Illegal small-scale mining (“galamsey”) remains a severe socio-environmental and economic challenge in Ghana, manifesting in land degradation, water contamination, and public-health risks. Despite repeated enforcement drives, the persistence of galamsey reveals limits to command-and-control approaches and underscores the need for complementary, community-embedded strategies. This article presents a documentary analysis and narrative review (2019–2025) of peer-reviewed scholarship and Ghanaian policy/agency reports to assess how religious organisations can mitigate galamsey through stewardship framings, policy engagement, and congregational mobilizations. The synthesis yields three insights. First, ecological injury and livelihood disruption are well documented at basin and community scales. Second, faith networks—via doctrinally grounded stewardship ethics and dense social ties—can catalyze norm change and channel credible reporting when procedures are clear and responses are time-bound and safe. Third, trust bottlenecks—fear of reprisals, opaque response lines, and politicization—depress citizen action, limiting the effect of moral exhortation alone. In response, the article proposes a faith–state collaboration blueprint comprising national memoranda of understanding, district faith–state committees, congregation-nominated environmental wardens, service standards (72-hour acknowledgement; 14-day action update), independent oversight, and a proportionate monitoring-and-evaluation plan. Integrating religious perspectives with auditable state response pathways offers a feasible route to sustained compliance and community monitoring. The study contributes an evidence-informed, design-level framework to operationalize faith–state collaboration for environmental governance in Ghana.