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AESEDA News :: Small-Scale mining in west Africa

Petra Tschakert Leads Workshop on Building a Research Infrastructure on Human and Environmental Health in Ghana's Small-Scale Mining Sector (January 7-10, 2008; Tarkwa, Ghana)

Penn State faculty Petra Tschakert, Assistant Professor Department of Geography and Director of AESEDA's Center of Resilience in Resource Management led a workshop entitled Building a Research Infrastructure on Human and Environmental Health in Ghana's Small-Scale Mining Sector from January 7th to 10th, 2008, in Tarkwa, Ghana. The workshop was funded by a grant from the Social Science Research Institute at Penn State. Penn State Assistant Professor Kamini Singha (Department of Geosciences) and students Jessica Lehman and Raymond Tutu (both Department of Geography) also participated.

The purpose of the workshop was to create an interdisciplinary research framework to tackle some of the challenges that face Ghana's small-scale mining sector. These issues include environmental degradation, water, air, and soil pollution, and social marginalization, along with related health effects. The workshop brought together 22 participants with interests in mining and society, from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. Over the course of four days, participants identified current research gaps related to linkages between mining and Buruli ulcer; mining waste management; mining, migration, and marginalization; and gold recovery and came up with ways to address them from multiple, integrated perspectives. Finally, the group began to draft questions for research proposals to address these issues.

For a more detailed summary of the workshop, please click here.

The collaborative research process begun in the workshop will continue in the US-Ghana Workshop on Resilience in Small-Scale Gold Mining in July 2008, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation.