This in-depth investigative report uncovers how severe coastal erosion is wiping out entire communities in Ghana’s Volta Region, including Fuvemeh and Dzakplagbe, destroying homes, heritage sites, and livelihoods. Featuring eyewitness accounts, scientific data, and expert analysis, the story exposes the human, cultural, and environmental cost of rising sea levels, failed sea defense systems, illegal sand mining, and climate change. It also highlights urgent solutions—from mangrove restoration to hybrid coastal protection—to save Ghana’s rapidly vanishing shoreline.
Browsing: Environment
An in-depth investigative feature exposing how Ghana’s gold mining rules protect political elites while targeting small miners. Through voices from Ashanti and Western Region communities, the story uncovers corruption, human struggles, and the systemic failures fueling the galamsey crisis.
Ghana’s Acting Environment Minister, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, has urged the Attorney-General to revoke L.I. 2462 and L.I. 2501, citing the need for a unified legal framework to protect forests, water bodies, and strengthen the fight against illegal mining (galamsey).
Ghana’s battle against galamsey has reached a turning point, with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources signaling that Legislative Instrument (LI) 2462 could soon be repealed as part of sweeping measures to confront the nation’s illegal mining crisis.
The acrid scent of burnt shea butter still clings to Ama Serwah’s hands six months after her life evaporated. “I stood right here watching flames swallow 20 years of work,” she says, kicking a twisted metal frame that once held her savings. “No water came. Only smoke and lies.” Her stall at Techiman Market’s Butubutu corner vanished on January 12, 2025—one of *seven infernos* that raged across Ghana in 30 days, devouring livelihoods while climate change turned neglect into catastrophe .
The Forestry Commission says the country aims to plant 30 million seedlings this year alone, up from the 25 million reported in 2024, with a national survival rate of just under 60%, according to the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.
Adwoa works hard on her 15-acre cocoa farm. With the help of these trees, she’s increased her cocoa harvest by 50%. But her carbon earnings for the whole year? Just $14.72. Meanwhile, big chocolate companies in Europe are making over $120 million by trading carbon credits from trees like hers.
Adwoa is one of 140,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana who joined the REDD+ program. It promised that farmers would get paid for protecting trees and reducing deforestation. But in her region, Western North, nearly 92% of farmers have no formal land documents. Because of this, their trees don’t count in the digital systems used to trade carbon. They are left out.
Her family is among 70,000 climate refugees who poured into Ghana’s Bono East region since 2023, escaping the Sahel’s advance. Now, they’re trapped in a cycle of exploitation and violence that exposes the human cost of global inaction
In 2023, Ghana exported over $10 million worth of scrap metal, according to the Ghana Export Promotion Authority.
For generations, Techiman’s farmers cleared fields with controlled burns. “Fire is our tractor,” explains cassava processor Kofi Boateng, gesturing at mounds of rotting mango peels outside Techiman Central Market. But climate change has weaponized tradition:
– *Rainfall has dropped 30% since 2020, desiccating crops into tinder
– Temperatures now spike to 42°C during Harmattan season
– 300+ tons of weekly market waste—with no municipal composting—pile up in fields