No abstract

One of the key challenges of constructing large‐scale water projects is determining how to manage social impacts such as the forced displacement and resettlement of the people in their path. Resettlement planners are tasked with the unenviable job of predicting these impacts and minimising their effects to enable the smooth completion of construction. The complexity of resettlement is reduced to a technical exercise carried out in accordance with international standards of best practice used by multilateral development banks and with the laws of national governments. Despite both the proliferation of these standards and legislation and the expansion of the resettlement industry, empirical research continues to demonstrate that resettlement causes impoverishment. Based on a qualitative study of three resettled villages at the Bui Dam resettlement in Ghana, this article highlights the political nature of resettlement. Using the concept of “precarity” we demonstrate how politics acts to render people moveable long before a project is conceived. Resettlement is shown to be a political tool that exposes and exacerbates existing precarity and becomes a site of struggle against the power of the state. By framing resettlement as an expression of politics rather than an exercise in management and containment, this article begins to uncover the flaws in technical planning processes and is a reminder that resettlement should be avoided wherever possible.

The Bui dam resettlement program is one of the best documented resettlement programs in Ghana in recent times. Historically Bui was known for „hosting“ a famous geographical feature – a gorge which became known as Bui Gorge, created by the saddle Banda Hills in midwestern Ghana. In contemporary terms Bui is associated with the 400MW hydro-electric dam (Bui Dam) built by the government of Ghana. Bui is also known to have veritable attachment to the natural environment such as the immediate ecology, the Black Volta and the nearby saddle mountains; all have been appropriated into the belief systems of the relocated communities who formerly inhabited the area. However, the construction of the Bui Dam and the associated relocation of the settlements have permanently changed the natural and the social landscape of these affected people. This assesses the salvage archaeology carried out at the Bui dam reservoir area between 2009 and 2011. We situate the discussion on the effects of the Bui dam on the current social transformations that have resulted from the construction of the Bui Dam.