Reimagining Natural Resource Governance: A Constitutional Revolution in Ghana
The Constitution Review Committee (“Committee”) set by the Government of Ghana on January 19, 2025 presented its report titled “Transforming Ghana: From Electoral Democracy to Developmental Democracy” to the President on December 22, 2025. The Committee has proposed a fundamental transformation in how Ghana manages its natural wealth, a shift so profound it represents nothing less than a constitutional revolution in resource governance. In this first brief, we provide highlights of the proposals for reforms on the natural resources sector and our preliminary thoughts on the proposals.
From Presidential Control to People’s Ownership
At the heart of these reforms lies a simple but powerful idea: Ghana’s natural resources belong to the people, not to any individual or office. The Committee recommends removing the current provision that vests minerals, water, and other natural resources in the President. Instead, these resources would vest directly in the people of Ghana, held in trust by the State for the benefit of both current and future generations.
This proposed reform is more than just symbolic. By establishing natural resources as a public trust, the Constitution would impose strict fiduciary obligations on everyone who manages these assets. Government officials, regulatory bodies, and all authorities involved in resource management would be legally bound to act with loyalty to the public interest, maintain transparency in their dealings, ensure sustainable use, and consider the needs of Ghanaians not yet born. These aren’t aspirational goals; they would be enforceable constitutional duties. This will strengthen the already existing duty placed on the citizens in Article 41k of the 1992 Constitution. This proposal implicitly sets the framework for addressing the tenuous issues of tree tenure.
A Framework of Binding Principles
To guide this new era of resource stewardship, the Committee proposes embedding a comprehensive set of principles directly into the Constitution. These principles would govern every law, contract, policy, and administrative decision touching natural resources.
The framework includes collective ownership and public trusteeship as foundational concepts. It demands intergenerational equity to ensure that today’s exploitation does not impoverish tomorrow’s generation. It requires adherence to the precautionary principle, erring on the side of caution when environmental harm is possible. Transparency and accountability become constitutional mandates, not optional practices.
Most significantly, the principles include Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) for communities affected by resource extraction, equitable benefit-sharing, climate compatibility, and full justiciability. This last element is crucial: these principles wouldn’t be mere aspirations but legally enforceable standards that citizens could invoke in court.
Enhanced Parliamentary oversight
The Committee recognised a troubling pattern. Too often, resource agreements have been signed with inadequate legislative scrutiny, sometimes committing Ghana to unfavourable terms that Parliament learns about only after the fact. The proposed reforms intend to end this practice decisively.
Under the proposed Constitutional framework, Parliament must give its approval before any natural resource concession or agreement is signed. But the process does not end there. Once the Executive signs the agreement, it must return to Parliament for confirmation that the signed document conforms to what Parliament approved. This dual approval mechanism ensures genuine legislative participation at both ends of the process before commitments are made and after they are finalised. The proposal ensures that the decision of committing the exploitation of Ghana’s irreplaceable natural wealth reflects the considered judgment of the people’s representatives and not just executive discretion.
It is our preliminary view that this proposal although it may enhance parliamentary oversight, it has the potential of creating bureaucratic hurdles and red tape. When adopted, it will require clear provisions to check parliamentary abuse and reduce bureaucratic hurdles.
Communities as Stakeholders, Not Bystanders
Communities hosting mining and resource extraction operations have borne the environmental and social costs at the expense of little or no benefits. The Committee proposes changing this fundamentally by constitutionally guaranteeing that up to three (3) percent of gross revenue from natural resource extraction goes directly to affected communities.
This is not charity, it is a constitutional recognition of the fact that these communities sacrifice their land, environment, and way of life for national development. The funds would support infrastructure, human development, and addressing environmental challenges arising from extraction activities.
The management structure reflects genuine community participation. A Board of Trustees would include representatives from the National Development Planning Commission, the relevant resource regulatory commission, the District Chief Executive, the highest traditional authority in the district, and critically, representatives of youth, women, and persons with disabilities. Parliament would be required to enact detailed legislation giving effect to this framework, ensuring it is not just a constitutional promise but an operational reality.
Coordinating a Fragmented System
Ghana’s natural resource governance currently suffers from fragmentation, with different commissions and agencies operating in silos: one for minerals, another for forests, another for water, and so on. The Committee proposes establishing a Natural Resource Commission to serve as a coordinating authority across all these sectors.
This Commission would not abolish existing bodies but would ensure coherence and alignment. It would promote coordination between decisions affecting minerals, forests, water resources, land use, agriculture, and environmental protection. Most importantly, it would safeguard adherence to the constitutional principles governing all natural resources, ensuring that sectoral interests do not override national priorities or constitutional requirements.
Even though the proposal is welcome news, our preliminary view is that the failure to abolish the existing resource commission or converting same into authorities under the Commission has the potential of worsening the fragmentation problem.
Maximising National Benefit
The Committee confronts an uncomfortable truth. Ghana has too often gotten a raw deal from its natural resources. Foreign companies extract enormous wealth while Ghana receives a fraction of the true value. The current practice of granting a mere ten (10) percent carried interest represents, in the Committee’s view, an inadequate return for irreplaceable national assets.
The recommendations chart a two-stage path to transformation. In the short term, Ghana should demand a significantly higher carried interest than the current ten (10) percent. But the long-term vision is more ambitious. Ghana should control the revenue from its resources entirely, paying foreign companies for their technical expertise as service providers rather than giving away ownership stakes.
The Committee notes that Ghana could raise funds through low-cost sovereign bonds to finance exploration and exploitation activities. By treating foreign involvement as a purchased service rather than a partnership requiring massive resource giveaways, Ghana could capture the full value of its natural wealth.
To ensure that resource wealth benefits not just today’s citizens but future generations, the Committee proposes the establishment of a Heritage Fund. This would be an investment vehicle where a part of resource revenues would be deposited and invested long-term, creating an endowment for Ghanaians not yet born. By embedding this in the Constitution rather than ordinary legislation, the Committee ensures it cannot be easily raided or abolished by future governments facing short-term pressures.
Criminalising Environmental Destruction
In one of the reports most striking recommendations, the Committee proposes creating the constitutional offense of ecocide: the deliberate causing of serious, widespread, and long-term environmental damage. This would carry severe punitive sanctions, expressing society’s revulsion at the destruction wrought by activities like illegal mining.
The Committee notes that many countries, including Belgium, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Kazakhstan, have already recognised ecocide as a distinct crime. Ghana’s illegal mining crisis, with its devastating impact on water bodies, forests, and agricultural land, demands an equally forceful legal response. By making ecocide a constitutional offence, Ghana would signal that environmental destruction is not merely a regulatory violation but an attack on the nation’s fundamental interests.
Recognising the Blue Economy
When the 1992 Constitution was drafted over thirty years ago, there was limited awareness of the ocean’s economic importance. That has changed dramatically. The Committee proposes adding a dedicated Article on ocean governance and the blue economy, recognising that Ghana’s maritime domain represents enormous, untapped potential.
This Article would impose obligations on the State across five critical areas. First, Ghana must sustainably manage the ocean and its resources. Second, the State must ensure security of Ghana’s maritime domain, either directly or through cooperation with other states and international organisations. Third, Ghana must identify, protect, and properly determine its maritime frontiers. Fourth, the country should cooperate with other states in sustainably managing both living and non-living ocean resources while maintaining a healthy ocean environment. Finally, Ghana must ratify all relevant international conventions relating to the marine environment.
This is a constitutional recognition that Ghana is not just a land-based nation but a maritime state whose future prosperity depends partly on how well it manages its ocean resources and participates in the emerging blue economy.
A New Social Contract
Taken together, these recommendations represent far more than technical adjustments to resource management procedures. They constitute a new social contract around natural resources, one that recognises these assets as belonging to all Ghanaians collectively, requires their management for the benefit of present and future generations, demands transparency and accountability at every stage, empowers both Parliament and affected communities, and establishes enforceable standards that can be vindicated in court.
The Committee’s vision moves Ghana from a system where natural resources are controlled through executive discretion to one based on public trusteeship; from procedural compliance to substantive constitutional principles; from short-term extraction to intergenerational equity; from centralised revenue to community benefit-sharing; and from single-point approval to comprehensive parliamentary oversight.
This is ambitious, certainly. But given the stakes, Ghana’s irreplaceable natural endowment, and the quality of life it could secure for millions of citizens, the Committee argues that nothing less will suffice. The question isn’t whether Ghana can afford such comprehensive reform. It’s whether Ghana can afford not to fundamentally transform how it manages the natural wealth upon which its future depends.
Conclusion: Charting the Path Forward
The Constitution Review Committee’s recommendations on natural resource governance represent a bold reimagining of Ghana’s relationship with its natural wealth. Yet as comprehensive and well-considered as these proposals are, they remain exactly that: proposals. The true work of constitutional transformation now lies ahead, requiring careful planning, sustained political will, and genuine national commitment to see these ideas through to implementation.
The journey from recommendation to constitutional amendment is neither simple nor swift, and for good reason. Ghana’s Constitution was designed to be deliberately difficult to change, ensuring that amendments reflect genuine national consensus rather than the whims of any government or moment. The Committee’s proposals touch both entrenched provisions, requiring referenda and supermajorities, and non-entrenched provisions amenable to parliamentary amendment. Each category demands its own pathway to implementation.
Before Ghana embarks on the elaborate constitutional amendment process, a critical intermediate step is necessary: the Executive branch must carefully study these recommendations, assess their implications, consult broadly, and develop a coherent implementation strategy. This is where a White Paper becomes essential.
Constitutional amendments alone won’t be sufficient. Parliament will need to enact comprehensive legislation to operationalise the new constitutional framework. The Committee has identified several critical legislative needs.
A Natural Resources Management Act would operationalise the constitutional principles, establish detailed procedures for community consultation and Free Prior and Informed Consent, create transparent processes for granting concessions, prescribe environmental and social impact assessment requirements, and establish enforcement mechanisms and sanctions for violations.
The Constitution Review Committee has done its work. It has consulted widely, deliberated carefully, and produced recommendations that, if implemented, would fundamentally transform how Ghana manages its natural wealth. These proposals offer a path toward ensuring that Ghana’s mineral resources, forests, water bodies, and ocean resources genuinely serve the interests of current and future generations rather than being exploited for the benefit of narrow elites or foreign interests.
But recommendations, no matter how sound, accomplish nothing by themselves. They require political courage to embrace, national will to implement, and sustained commitment to see through to completion. The next steps: a comprehensive White Paper, phased constitutional amendments, complementary legislation, institutional capacity building, and meaningful public participation are all essential. Each represents significant work, but none is optional if Ghana genuinely seeks to transform natural resource governance from a source of disappointment and conflict into a foundation for sustainable, equitable development.
The question before Ghana’s leadership is not whether these reforms are technically feasible, as they are. Nor is it whether they are legally sound, since the Committee has ensured they are. The question is whether Ghana possesses the political will to reimagine and restructure its relationship with the natural wealth that should be its greatest asset. The Committee has charted the course. Now Ghana must choose whether to embark on the journey.
Constitutional Reform Proposals On Natural Resources in Governance Download
