Exploring community-based solutions for sustainable mined land restoration: a case study from Ghana’s small-scale mining sector

Illegal small-scale mining and processing activities (ASM) have led to vast areas of degraded, contaminated, and abandoned local-community lands, posing a major environmental concern in many developing countries. In the absence of effective state mechanisms to enforce more sustainable mining and post-mining practices, there are increasing discussions on whether community-based solutions could be a second-best solution to restore such lands. This paper analyzes a unique case of an NGO-initiated, community-based ASM land restoration project in Ghana, examining the conditions under which communities could ensure sustainable land rehabilitation outcomes. Qualitative methods are used to map out key actors and relationships to make community-based rehabilitation projects work, followed by the stated preferences method to estimate factors influencing the local communities’ decision to contribute to mined land restoration, including phytoremediation, a technique to reduce contamination. Our findings reveal that there is community support for reclaiming and remediating former ASM lands using communal labor, however, support depends on land tenure arrangements, among other factors. Chiefs, as community overlords, were perceived among the most influential actors as they have the power to enact and enforce local laws and sanction noncompliance with regards to customary land management. Local community members and landowners, however, were seen to be largely not organized, with different land use priorities and unregulated and insecure land tenure structures. Overall, this study shows that community-based solutions could be a second-best option for mined-land rehabilitation, however, such efforts need to pay close attention to social networks, norms, rules, and practices, to be successful and ensure that community members really benefit.