KYEBI, Ghana — Below the towering mahogany trees that blanket this lush mountainside, hidden beneath the brown-red soil, lie millions of tons of very valuable rock.
This world-renowned forest reserve, called the Atewa, is the source of three major rivers that provide water to 5 million people. It is also home to an estimated 165 million tons of bauxite, a sedimentary rock used to create aluminum products such as aircraft parts, kitchen utensils and beer cans.
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Ghana’s leaders want to mine the bauxite, which they see as the country’s ticket to economic growth, thanks to a big-name partner — China. Campaigners and water experts say the environmental cost is too high: Mining would taint the water, they claim.
“When you take the mountain off, you change the hydrology and ecology,” said Ronald Abrahams, a chief officer of the Water Resources Commission, the government agency tasked with managing the use of Ghana’s water resources. “It will not be the same. It will change everything, and we won't have a source of a river which is so reliable and has served this nation for ages.”
Ghana is looking to mine bauxite to uphold what it calls a barter deal with China’s Sinohydro Corp. Limited. Sinohydro delivers $2 billion worth of infrastructure projects across the country, which Ghana would pay back with proceeds from the sale of the refined bauxite. (The Ghanaian government’s plans include building a refinery to process the raw bauxite.)
China is the top buyer of minerals and rocks from Africa, pouring tens of billions of dollars into mining across the continent over the past decade — an investment that has fueled the country’s reign as the world’s largest aluminum producer.
The Asian powerhouse is also Africa’s biggest funder of infrastructure projects. It has pledged reams of cash for roads, bridges, power plants and oil refineries.
A man walks past an abandoned bauxite shed containing samples extracted by a mining company from the Kyebi Forest Reserve to analyze the quality of its soil. (Cristina Aldehuela/AFP/Getty Images)
A sample box of bauxite from the Atewa Forest Reserve. (Cristina Aldehuela/AFP/Getty Images)
These buyer and funder identities often intersect as China offers big-ticket loans in exchange for access to lucrative resources in Ghana, Guinea, the Congo and beyond. But analysts say the high-profile deals, touted by both Chinese and African officials as a shared path to prosperity, rarely lift the continent’s poorest residents and can harm the environment.
Neither the Chinese government, through its embassy in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, nor Sinohydro, which is a state-owned corporation, responded to requests for comment.
Much is unknown about the government’s mining plans in the Atewa, a 90-square-mile tract of mountainous forestland. The three major rivers that originate there — the Densu, Birim and Ayensu — provide drinking water to three regions of Ghana, including to the 1 million people in Accra.
Bauxite typically is found in the topsoil and extracted through strip mining, which requires removing layers of soil and rock to access the minerals below. Elsewhere, bauxite mining has had devastating consequences. A 2018 Human Rights Watch report on bauxite mining in Guinea found that the country’s dozens of open-pit operations had destroyed farmlands, damaged water sources, and coated homes and crops in dust.
Environmental campaigners warn that if mining in the Atewa begins, runoff from the operations would contaminate the three rivers and smaller streams and would pollute surrounding areas with bauxite dust. Ultimately, they fear the evergreen forest — with its waterfalls and rare butterflies, frogs and monkeys — will disappear.
Their worries were reinforced in March when the U.S. Forest Service visited the Atewa to provide technical consultation to Ghana’s government. Its report said mining could lead to a “potential s.