Wolfram Laube Livres

Attempts to `civilize' the exploitation of natural and mineral resources are globally promoted. The body of rules and regulations—often the outcome of prolonged socio-environmental and political struggles—is impressive. However, the outcomes of their implementation are much less convincing. The chapters in this book show how international law is curtailing national and local regulation, while existing legislation is often watered-down, circumvented, or reinterpreted with severe environmental, health, and socio-economic impacts, particularly in the `global south.'

Colonial and national interventions have considerably changed the natural resource regimes regarding water and land in Northern Ghana. However, this change has not led to the establishment of new institutions, but different actors - farmers, bureaucrats, earthpriests, chiefs, and politicians - are continuously engaged in negotiation process over (natural) resources. While the institutional and distributional outcomes of these negotiation processes remain inconclusive they have led to a precarious local power balance, in which different actors rely on different institutions and changing political alliances to pursue their interests.