NewzFormer Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng has blamed Ghana’s persistent environmental crisis on a political system in which officials who enforce environmental laws bear the political consequences while those who fail to act face little or no cost. He said the imbalance had weakened successive efforts to combat illegal mining, popularly known as galamsey, despite the extensive damage it continues to cause to the country’s rivers, forests and farmlands. “In Ghana, the political cost of enforcing environmental law falls on the enforcer, and the political cost of not enforcing it falls on nobody,” he said.
Frimpong-Boateng made the remarks in a keynote address at the Fourth Annual Colloquium of the Department of Political Science at the University of Education, Winneba, on Wednesday, September 2, 2026. The colloquium was held under the theme, “Politics, the Environment, and Our Future: Ghana at Crossroads?” Prof. Frimpong-Boateng, who chaired the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining between 2017 and 2021, said successive governments had introduced policies, task forces and military operations to tackle galamsey but had struggled to sustain them.
He cited the 2017 ban on artisanal and small-scale mining, Operation Vanguard, the establishment of 72 district committees, the training of 3,000 miners and the introduction of systems to track mining concessions and excavators. According to him, the measures initially produced results, with sections of the Pra River becoming clear and water treatment costs falling at some affected intake points. However, he said many of the safeguards introduced during the period were subsequently abandoned after the mining ban was lifted on December 21, 2018.
The architecture that made the permission defensible did not,” Prof. Frimpong-Boateng also recalled submitting a report to the Presidency at the end of his tenure detailing the state of illegal mining and what he described as efforts to obstruct attempts to combat it. He said that when the report became public in 2022, the national debate focused more on his motives for writing it than on the substance of the allegations.
“The country did not ask: is it true? The country asked: why did he write it, and whom does it help? Former Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has claimed that some of Ghana’s polluted rivers began recovering following the erstwhile government’s clampdown on illegal mining between 2017 and 2018, but the safeguards introduced to sustain the gains were later abandoned.
He said sections of the Pra River ran clear for the first time in years during the moratorium on artisanal and small-scale mining, while fishermen reported catching fish in waters previously considered “dead”. Prof Frimpong-Boateng made the remarks while delivering the keynote address at the Fourth Annual Colloquium of the Department of Political Science Education at the University of Education, Winneba, on Wednesday, September 2, 2026. The event was held under the theme, “Politics, the Environment, and Our Future: Ghana at Crossroads?” “That happened within about a year of the moratorium, and it tells you something no laboratory reading can: the rivers were not destroyed beyond recovery.
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