Ending Community Gold Mining Across Akyem Abuakwa: Start from Akyem Juaso

News that Akyem Juaso's once beautiful and bountiful section of the designated Globally Significant Biodiversity Area (GSBA), part of Akyem Abuakwa's priceless Atewa Range, is now apocalyptically degraded as a result of community gold mining - and apparently swarming with illegal immigrants using metal detectors, and alleged to have access to arms and be prepared to use them if interfered with, according to bush telegraph sources - comes as no surprise to us. Yet, truth be told, community gold mining has no legal basis.

Decades ago, some of us boldly predicted that this might happen if active steps weren't taken to halt illegal gold mining and the illegal felling of trees for chainsaw bushcut lumber production that funded it in Akyem Juaso. Unfortunately, it fell on deaf ears.

As it happens, we spent our own resources trying to get the relevant regulatory bodies to act, but to no avail - as gold miners' big fat brown envelopes, full of cash, regularly dispensed as gifts, had turned some key employees of those selfsame regulatory bodies into their loyal paid lackeys, who had become well-compensated fifth columnists operating on their behalf within our Republic's bedrock system.

Despite the apocalyptic damage caused by galamsayers and illegal loggers, it is still possible for the harm to be halted and remedial rewilding and other restorative regenerative green economy strategies adopted to return our dear Akyem Abuakwa's priceless natural heritage to its glory days of repute as Kwaebibirim.

By leaving the gold in the ground, Ghana can:

- Restore 400,000 hectares of degraded land by 2035 (Ghana's Nationally Determined Contributions, 2023)

- Increase forest cover from 25% to 35% by 2035 (Ghana's Forest Plantation Development Strategy, 2023)

- Sequester 12 million tons of CO2 equivalent annually (IPCC, 2023)

- Support 150,000 jobs in the forestry sector by 2035 (Ghana's Forestry Development Master Plan, 2023)

- Generate $2 billion annually from sustainable forest products (FAO, 2023)

- Enhance biodiversity by 25% by 2035 (IUCN, 2023)

- Improve water quality by 35% by 2035 (Water Resources Commission, 2023)

- Increase crop yields by 25% through agroforestry practices (ICRAF, 2023)

That determination to act must begin from Ofori Panin Fie, at the behest of the current Okyenhene, Osagyefo Ofori Panin Amoatia - who must follow the shining example of the current Asantehene, Otumfour Osei Tutu II, and start destooling all the Chiefs across Akyem Abuakwa who have sat idly by and allowed galamsayers to destroy forests in their domains.

Nothing short of that will do - if today's membership of the Akyem Abuakwa State Council is not to be cursed and condemned by future generations for allowing Kwaebibirim to be destroyed under their watch.

Let the fightback begin at Akyem Juaso, where they can count on the unflinching support of our branch of the P. E. Thompson family tree (who are environmental activists dead set against gold mining and illegal logging), Akyem Juaso's biggest freehold private landowners with a total of 14 square miles, with 99.6 acres inside the Atewa Forest Reserve known in Forestry Commission jargon as an "admitted farm" to which we have legal access but have saved for a community-based carbon sequestration initiative.

We don't approve of community gold mining on our privately owned freehold land - and will happily place our extensive and unrivalled global networks of contacts at Ofori Panin Fie's disposal if formally requested to do so by the Akyem Abuakwa State Council, to enable it to collaborate with private sector investors, to develop a new economic pillar for Akyem Abuakwa that creates wealth that remains local and empowers local youth to bootstrap their own way out of the poverty trap (as green micro entrepreneurs), to become financially independent.

A word to the wise...