Talk:Ghana: Gold Mining Resurgence

Summary of students' discussion

Economy

…two different perspectives in our case study. One is local and one global. I partly agree with globalization as it really is an opening of borders to free trade but I am also "advocate" of the traditional product, as for example, when assessing a producer of quality for me is very important and globalization that we lose ...

Foreign companies and their "externalities". Economy is the current engine…

It seems that it is very hard all over the world to repress economical interests by goals of anyone else with different interests.

There is an important relation between globalization and economics. As you can see with the so called Dutch disease. This means that countries owning natural resources are not able to use this advantage. They cannot increase their wealth.

…the role of the World Bank. Did the World Bank really worked for interests of international companies without considering conditions of developing African countries? Or what was her point?

Ghana is actually doing quite well in comparison with other African countries. It has the fastest growing economy in the world and its currency quite stable. It has a sound educational system. But it lacks medical staff. And even though its workforce is one of the most skilled in Africa contracts are being outsourced to foreign companies. This is probably the loophole you´re talking about, since cuts the GDP quite a bit. But Ghana doesn´t only export gold, among other things like bauxite and electricity, it also found a large deposit of oil just recently. And statistically there is also the problem of a growing and short-lived population.

Environment

[There is a] loophole as far as environment is concerned. From the loophole benefited foreign companies.

…conflicts between economical interests and environmental protection seem to have a better chance to be solved in more developed countries, because there people have more options to choose which job will feed them.

On one hand it is unfair to ask that they have to break their development to avoid prejudicing the resources of the planet, but I believe that international control of multinational companies is necessary and we have to help these countries providing technological advances.

Social consequences

In this concrete situation the local environmental impacts are huge of course but I found the social impacts even more alarming. Especially how everything is connected togehter: mining causes resettlement of local communities but the compensations are not adequate and there is no place for younger people in the new housing. They are not able to pay for new places where to live which leads to homelessness. Because of mining there is loss of farmland which has two consequences - (1) unemployment among former farmers and (2) decreased food production which causes increased prices. These bad economic conditions than push many children to work instead of going to school.

You can argue that mining has significant benefit for the national income if not for local communities but the article says that mining contributed to total Ghanaian GDP only by 1,5 % in 1996. In my opinion this is too low reward for the damaged nature and very bad living conditions in the region.

I found one information in the text which I can't really explain – in the part about demographics it says that the male-female ratio is 1:9 in the region. I would expect somewhat different proportion in a mining region. Do you have an explanation for it?

Civic society

…lack of information for the civilian population living in Ghan, isolated from any information that has to do with the enrichment process Ghana mining.

In my opinion we must continue to work with this issue, first locally and then globally, only if more people begin to acknowledge these problems and apply pressure on those who really can do more, for example Governments and international institutions (IMF, OECD, WTO, etc) that they are some of the organizations that should be more aware of this matter and should be forced to take action.

…political organization and the environmental theme … We read [that much] has been greatly improved, calling for responsibilities to companies, non-governmental organizations also are influencing the decisions of the Government and the Government seems to be more aware in doing in a more sustainable way.

Case study approach

It works! there is impressive how fast in recents decades is changing the world, no doubt derived from the globalization process, …

I've been reading a case study nearly whole week, it's quite complex . I'm trying to take some notes for easier orientation later on . That's maybe why does it takes so long time to me.

It is interesting, and I wonder how would that compare to the change in landsape made in medieval times in European space from the utilisation of forests and fields. The land was also originaly forested here.

I think this resource is very interesting and offers the possibility to compare the same space at different periods of time, can show the situation in which there is a territory as it has evolved over time and in our case, we can assess the situation current territory of Ghana. I think it is a very effective tool to get an overall idea of the environmental problems we face.

Parts about economy, companies and institutions was quite hard for me, but I can somehow imagine the view.

I am really impressed of all the sources it is quite a lot and very interesting.

This is a very interesting case and the pictures also. I must say that it is interesting how problem to which globalization contributed is being solved thanks to globalization

Hello, I think case studies are one of the best research methods because they show many aspects of the concrete problem area in practice.

… the case is extensive and has many nuances,…

--Jana Dlouha 16:33, 27 November 2011 (CET)