Depending on soil, climate and crop characteristics exposed subsoils can be amended with gypsum for agricultural activities when topsoil is inadequate as a result of natural and geophysical activities. To determine how exposed subsoil amendment with gypsum interact with weather patterns to influence soil chemical properties, cucumber growth, fruit characteristics and heavy metal concentration, a two-seasonal experiment was conducted in the major and minor rainy season of 2020 in the Ahafo-Kenyasi Mining Area in Ghana. The experiment was laid out as a 6x2 factorial arranged in randomized complete block design, consisting of 6 gypsum application rates (20 ton/ha, 40 ton/ha, 60 ton/ha, 80 ton/ha, 0 ton/ha (subsoil control) and 0 ton/ha (topsoil control)) in two rainy seasons and replicated three times. The results show that gypsum application and rainy seasons interact to significantly influence soil chemical properties, cucumber growth and fruit characteristics. Increasing gypsum application resulted in decreased organic carbon, increased calcium, increased available P, increased exchangeable magnesium (Mg), increased pH during both major and minor rainy seasons. Vine length, number of leaves, number of fruits per plant and fruit weight of cucumber were increased with increasing gypsum application during the minor rainy season. In spite of exceeding permissible limits in soils and crops, arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd) and mercury (Hg) showed similar concentrations (below 2 mg/kg) in cucumber during the minor and major rainy seasons across gypsum treatments. Lead (Pb) concentration in cucumber was significantly higher in the major season across treatments. There was no difference in lead (Pb) concentration for treated vs untreated, and no increase across the amendment range. Further studies on how heavy metals in soil and plants interact with plant phytochemicals in ecosystems and living tissues are recommended.

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Extractive resources, particularly minerals, soil and timber, have historically supplied the infrastructural, technological, energy and many other goods and services consumers enjoy. However, the global value chains for these high-valued commodities have been criticized as being abusive of economic, sociocultural and environmental rights of resource-rich communities and nations. Paradoxically, it has been found that countries with abundant natural resources such as gold, oil, bauxite, etc. tend to have less economic growth, poor democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources due to poor governance, limited accountability, poor transparency and weak technical capacity (Adams et al., 2018). The questions that development practitioners and scholars often ask has been how Africa's natural resources can be effectively governed to best serve the wellbeing and needs of Africans including staying within ecological limits and improving environmental quality. To this end the concepts of natural resource governance, sustainable mining and ecological governance among others are gaining popularity in discourses within the environment and natural resource space as activists and scholars question the role of extractive resources on human wellbeing and environmental sustainability. Questions such as what should inform mineral resource governance policy to guarantee sustainability?, how can existing policies be improved to facilitate the entrenchment and achievement of intergenerational equity for resource-rich countries?, what variables, themes and concepts should be prioritized or managed to achieve a balance between human wellbeing and environmental sustainability?, what role