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

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.