Reclamation of Galamsey Land is Not Land Restoration: The Land Beyond Agriculture

Abstract

Agriculture is not the only imperative for land reclamation. In Ghana, conflation of disapproval, and clarion call for compulsory reclamation of ‘galamey’-degraded arable lands, by the moral society and eco-conscious minority in order to sustain biodiversity, agricultural productivity, environmental safety, and public health is muffled by the oratory artifice of utilitarians (both utilitarian narrowness and indifference) and the financial might of political financiers fronting for international gold merchants. The coup de grace is delivered by unpatriotic, unethical, and compromised environmental scientists and scholars whose acquiescence legitimized the false scientific narrative of synonymy of land reclamation to land ecosystem restoration. The error builds complacency that weakens collective revulsion for the insensate destruction of nature by illegal small-scale gold mining; believing that, remedy lies in merely covering up dugouts or levelling up degraded areas and re-vegetating them. Neither ignorance nor conceptual oversight is an alibi; the interchangeable use of land reclamation and land restoration is a veneer by insincere political actors to shirk responsibility for a national course, and sophism by opportunistic scientists and scholars to plunder and pillage national resources in a course which does not fully address a national tragedy! Presently (2026), the ever-changing estimated cost of reclaiming a hectare of galamsey-degraded arable land is $48 thousand; $264 million for the over 5 500 hectares degraded so far. But, the overall national conservative budgetary estimate for reclamation and short-term restoration (for arable purpose only) of the same 5 500-plus hectares, is a whopping $17 billion! Yes, degraded lands must be reclaimed at all cost but, further efforts must be expended to attain land ecosystem restoration in the end. Land reclamation is only the important first step in the long journey to land ecosystem restoration; it is not an end in itself. This is the thesis of this scientific master piece.