Decentralization for Increased Sustainability in Natural Resource Management? Two Cautionary Cases from Ghana

James Natia Adam, Timothy Adams, Jean-David Gerber and Tobias Haller
Additional contact information
James Natia Adam: Institute of Geography, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
Timothy Adams: Institute of Geography, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
Jean-David Gerber: Institute of Geography, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
Tobias Haller: Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 12, 1-23

Abstract: In Sub-Saharan African countries, governments are increasingly devolving natural resource management from central administration to the local government level as a trend toward subsidiarity. In parallel, efforts to implement formalization processes have resulted in a puzzling institutional arena, wherein mixed actors are struggling to influence the paths of institutional change and the associated distribution of land and land-related resources. Relying on political ecology and new institutionalism in social anthropology, we investigate how the decentralization of formalization of rights in artisanal and small-scale gold mining can lead to paradoxical outcomes, often negatively impacting social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Two comparative case studies are performed in Ghana. Our results show that the negative effects of formalization efforts for resource end users are to be understood in the broad context of actors’ repositioning strategies following the selective implementation of decentralization. The authors conclude that increasing the power of the central government and line ministries to control local resources can influence the disenfranchisement of local people’s participation and control of natural resources, resulting in a relentless environmental crisis.

Keywords: artisanal mining; conflict; decentralization; formalization; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6885/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6885/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:12:p:6885-:d:577189

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().