AESEDA News :: Petra Tschakert attends First International Conference on Environmental Research, Technology and Policy: Building Tools and Capacity for Sustainable Production (Accra, Ghana, July 17-19, 2007)
Penn State faculty, Dr. Petra Tschakert, Assistant Professor of Geography and Director of the Sustainable Mining Center in AESEDA, attended the First International Conference on Environmental Research, Technology and Policy (ERTEP 2007) in Accra, Ghana, from July 17th to 19th, 2007. This important meeting brought together researchers, consultants, engineers, NGOs, and policy makers to discuss global environmental issues relating to resource exploitation and consumption, the development of environmental monitoring and remediation technologies, and capacity building for environmental policy making. It also addressed gender issues in environmental stewardship, especially in Africa's most disadvantaged regions.
Together with Raymond Tutu, Jones Adjei, and Doris Ottie-Boakye (all from the Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana) and Jessica Lehman (Department of Geography, PSU), Petra Tschakert presented a paper entitled "Contaminated identities: Understanding human and environmental risks and livelihood options among small-scale gold miners in Ghana". It summarized the major findings of research conducted with gold miners in the summer of 2006, in collaboration with Dr. Kamini Singha (Geosciences, PSU) and with support from the Africana Research Center and an EMS Wilson Research grant. Most of the miners with whom the interdisciplinary team worked operate without a license. Hence, they are considered illegal and essentially marginalized by the media, governmental institutions, and often also scientists. Locally, these miners are known as galamseyers.
"Perpetuating the environmental narrative of reckless mercury contamination for which the galamseyers are typically accused undermines their possibilities for self-determination and learning in Ghana's artisanal and small-scale mining sector", says Petra. "The main predicament in this sector, officially portrayed as a governmental approach to poverty reduction, stems from the exclusion of the large majority of these miners - men and women - from educational, health, technological, and financial services. What is needed most is to get the miners out of their illegal status and raise the sector's profile by accepting and nurturing it as a viable livelihood strategy."
Jessica Lehman, Petra Tschakert, Doris Ottie-Boakye, Chris Anderson (Newmont), Raymond Tutu, Michael Adewumi, Jones Adjei (from left to right).
Details on the ERTEP conference can be found online at http://www.ertep2007.uwo.ca/index.html.
Submitted by Jennifer Theiss, jaw34@psu.edu 865-0333.