ID: 1803
Presenting Author: Samuel Kumi
Session: 758 - Reframing Impact Assessment Narratives in Africa: Combating Misinformation, Power Asymmetries, and Distrust in Development
Status: pending
The study finds technological, institutional, stakeholder, and information factors drive mining permitting delays, causing significant socioecological costs, and recommends digital tools, stronger EI
Delays and disputes in environmental permitting impose significant socioecological and economic costs yet remain underexplored. This study assessed the drivers and impacts of permitting delays in Ghana’s mining sector using Landsat imagery (2017–2021) under supervised classification and structured interviews with 300 stakeholders across five Newmont Ahafo mining communities. The interrelationships among influencing factors were analyzed using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) model. Results revealed a substantial decline in agricultural land from 59% to 24%, with corresponding increases in built-up/speculative structures (327.44%) and vegetation/plantations (50.98%) over the study period. The delay extended the project’s gold pour timeline from 2021 to 2025, increasing compensation and financial burdens. PLS analysis showed that inappropriate technological tools for stakeholder and project information management were the most significant driver of permitting delay (p = 0.000), followed by internal EIA issues (p = 0.001), poor stakeholder engagement (p = 0.004), negative local perceptions (p = 0.006), land ownership and access issues (p = 0.018), bureaucratic inefficiencies (p = 0.092), and baseline data issues (p = 0.742). Conversely, speculative development acted as an inverse driver. The study calls for fit-for-purpose digital tools to enhance project transparency, stronger community EIA capacity to address power and information asymmetries, streamlined permitting processes, inclusive stakeholder engagement, and integration of robust baseline data systems to manage mining
Dr. Samuel Kumi, Senior Lecturer at UENR and Director of Environcomrel Consult and the Mining Community Rights Network, specializes in environmental impact assessment, resource governance, and ecosyst
Coauthor 1: Jackson Adiyiah