petra

The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is the home of AESEDA at Penn State. The broad interest of EMS faculty in African research initiatives led to the launch of AESEDA.

NSF US-Ghana Workshop on Resilience in Small-Scale Gold Mining (July 7-10, 2008)

This workshop, funded by the National Science Foundation (Office of International Science and Engineering) will bring together diverse stakeholders in Ghana’s small-scale mining sector to address current key research issues. It will encourage a team of US and Ghanaian scientists and practitioners to pursue, in more detail, science questions identified during the SSRI-funded workshop in January 2008. These relate to linkages between mining and Buruli ulcer; mining waste management; mining, migration, and marginalization; and gold recovery. Drs. Petra Tschakert and Erica Smithwick (Geography) will lead this workshop.

The broader theory enhanced through this interdisciplinary science workshop is that of complex systems science with a specific focus on social-ecological resilience. The workshop will contribute to this specific field of inquiry by understanding the processes, interactions, feedbacks, and cycles of various types of contamination in the small-scale gold mining sector through careful integration across time and space. Additionally, the workshop participants will explore to which extent inadequate understanding of local socio-economic conditions and lack of community representation and participation within the small-scale mining sector contributes to a potentially highly volatile situation in an otherwise relatively peaceful nation with a long history of stability. Ultimately, discussions are expected to identify transformative dynamics that may have important implications for the sustainability of the small-scale mining sector in Ghana and beyond.

There are four major benefits we expect as outcomes of this science workshop:

  • An emerging understanding of the usefulness of approaching the small-scale mining sector, conceptually, as a set of complex interactions of human and natural systems. This understanding deviates from current approaches and would allow us develop subsequent proposals to NSF, especially the CNH Program, to further explore non-linear system behavior and thresholds;
  • An understanding that mercury may not be the only and potentially not even the most important driver of contamination associated with mining. Cyanide, for instance, may cause more substantial and immediate damage over larger spatial scales. Moreover, ‘contamination’ is also likely to occur at the social realm, particularly in form of exclusion, corruption, and marginalization;
  • A recognition that small-scale mining may indeed be a viable livelihood option for many poor and marginalized people and that it requires nurturing at various levels, not only improved access to technical innovations;
  • Concrete activities that allow miners to participate in learning activities and become better environmental stewards as well as recognized citizens.